Scoop was still grinning, contented, I imagine, in the thought of how very smart he was! 

“As I say,” he went on, “I don’t believe in ghosts, and consequently I don’t know very much about them. But from what I’ve heard, I have the impression that a ghost is sort of unfriendly. Of a mean disposition, it delights to sneak up on people. And the more people it scares into fits, the merrier for it. That is my idea of a ghost, Yet, if I am to believe your story, this ghost did you a good turn.” 

“A friendly ghost,” grinned Peg, amused in the thought. “Haw! haw! haw!” he burst out, in his rough way. “It isn’t every company of showmen with a friendly ghost on their side. We’re lucky.” 

At Scoop’s request I repeated my dream. [29]

[29]

“I was in a cave,” I told him. “It was dark. Like the inside of a cistern at midnight. I could feel something near me. A sort of invisible thing. Then I heard a low, whispering voice. ‘Where … are … you?’ I couldn’t see a thing, as I say. But somehow I knew that it was a ghost that was whispering to me. ‘Where … are … you?’ it breathed again. I wanted to run away. But I couldn’t move. I was scared stiff. A sort of paralysis. Every second I expected to feel the pressure of its cold hand on mine. Ough! I was full of shivers. Then, sudden-like, I was wide awake.” 

“And the voice that you heard after the Strickers had gone was the same voice that you heard in your dream?” 

I nodded. 

“Not only the same voice,” I told him, “but the same words.” 

He was puzzled. 

“I’ve been told,” he said, thinking, “that dreams happen in a flash. And I guess it’s so. For one night when it was storming Mother came into my bedroom to close my window. The creaking of the window pulleys sort of registered in my sleeping mind. And I had a long, crazy dream about burglars. To have done what I did in the [30]dream would have taken an hour or more. Yet it all happened in an instant.” 

[30]

“If that is the case,” I reasoned out, “I must have heard the whispering voice in my sleep.” 

“It was the whispering voice,” the leader declared, 

 Prev. P 29/153 next