the ghost walking, and all that," Jack continued.

"Huh! that must have been when the boss was paying off his hands,"
chuckled Bobolink. "I always heard that was the time the ghost walked."

"In this case the truth was only found out by some accident," Jack went
on to say, without paying any heed to the interruption. "I think a hunter
was overtaken by darkness, having lost himself in the woods. He was a
stranger, and had never heard about the haunted mill. So, seeing a light,
he went up to ask his way, or if he could get a chance of a bed that
night, I forget which. He saw enough to give him a suspicion; and when he
did get back to the tavern he was stopping at, he sent word to the
Government authorities. A raid resulted, and they caught four
counterfeiters hard at work."

"_Four,_ you said, Jack!" echoed Tom.

"Yes, just the same number there seems to be here; but then that's only a
coincidence, because those others are serving ten-year sentences in the
penitentiary. Now, you see, I guess the fact of Cedar Island being said
to have a real ghost got me into the idea of thinking about that story I
read in the paper. Of course it's a silly idea all around."

"Well, I don't know," said Paul, slowly.

"You don't mean to say you think it might happen that way here?" demanded
Jack, seeming to be the only one desirous of "shooting holes" in the
proposition he had himself advanced, as Bobolink expressed it later on.

"It's possible," Paul said, simply.