"Rats in the wainscot," chimed in Lester. "As you like," said Barnes
coloring.

"Suppose we all go," said Meagle. "Start after supper, and get there
about eleven. We have been walking for ten days now without an
adventure--except Barnes's discovery that ditchwater smells longest. It
will be a novelty, at any rate, and, if we break the spell by all
surviving, the grateful owner ought to come down handsome."

"Let's see what the landlord has to say about it first," said Lester.
"There is no fun in passing a night in an ordinary empty house. Let us
make sure that it is haunted."

He rang the bell, and, sending for the landlord, appealed to him in the
name of our common humanity not to let them waste a night watching in a
house in which spectres and hobgoblins had no part. The reply was more
than reassuring, and the landlord, after describing with considerable art
the exact appearance of a head which had been seen hanging out of a
window in the moonlight, wound up with a polite but urgent request that
they would settle his bill before they went.

"It's all very well for you young gentlemen to have your fun," he said
indulgently; "but supposing as how you are all found dead in the morning,
what about me? It ain't called the Toll-House for nothing, you know."

"Who died there last?" inquired Barnes, with an air of polite derision.

"A tramp," was the reply. "He went there for the sake of half a crown,
and they found him next morning hanging from the balusters, dead."