“All my life,” I followed up, waggling, “I’ve carried in my mind a sort of idea of what a ghost’s voice would be like, if there was such a [27]thing as a ghost. And twice last night I heard exactly that kind of a voice.” 

[27]

“It was a queer voice,” Peg told Scoop, serious. “Sort of hollow, like a whisper in a dark tomb.” 

“Jinks! If you fellows keep on talking about tombs, backing each other up in your crazy story, you’ll have me actually believing that your visitor was a ghost.” 

“If it wasn’t a ghost,” I said, to a good point, “why did the Strickers scream and run away?” 

“The Strickers are likely to do anything.” 

“They wouldn’t have been afraid of a man.” 

“Maybe,” Scoop grinned, keeping up the argument, “the man had a gun or a sword.” 

“Bunk!” I grunted, disgusted with the arguer, who is never so happy as when he is trying, superior-like, to talk some one else down. “They saw a ghost,” I waggled, “and nothing else but.” 

My stiff attitude seemed to amuse the other. 

“All right,” he nodded. “Have it your own way. It was a ghost, as you say. And what is a ghost? A supernatural thing, if we are to believe the crazy stories that we have heard. And, being supernatural, a ghost, of course, knows everything. It doesn’t have to ask questions. It knows what it wants to know without asking. Isn’t that right?” [28]

[28]

I nodded. 

“All right!” he came back quickly, a snappier sparkle in his eyes. “If this visitor of yours was a ghost, as you declare, why did it ask you where you were? Explain that, if you can.” 

Peg scratched his head and squinted at me. 

“That’s a good argument, Jerry.” 

But I wasn’t going to back down and let the smart one have everything his own way. 

“Huh!” I said, standing by my belief. 

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