“Why didn’t you shoot at it?” asked Snap.  “That is what I should have done.”

“Humph!  I guess if you saw that ghost you’d be paralyzed,” said Carl Dudder.  “Why it was enough to make your hair raise on ends!”

“I thought it was coming ashore and murder the lot of us,” said Jack Voss.

“Then you are not going to stay here?” asked Giant.

“Not much!  I am going down to Lake Cameron as quick as I can get there!”

“So am I!” said another.

“You had better go down, too,” said a third.

“No, we are going to stay here,” answered Shep.  “We haven’t seen the ghost, but we have heard those ghostlike voices and we want to find out what it means.”

“Oh, there’s a real ghost—–­I heard about it before I left home,” said Carl Dudder.  “But I didn’t think it would visit us.”

“I’d stay, only the rest won’t,” said Ham Spink, thinking he must put on a bold front before Snap and his chums.

“What are you talking about!” cried Ike Akley, indignantly.  “Why, you were the first to propose going home.”

“That’s true,” said another boy.

“Well—–­er—–­I thought perhaps you didn’t care to stay,” stammered Ham.  “Anyway, I think it is much nicer down to Lake Cameron,” he added, hastily, to change the subject.  “The snakes are numerous up here, and game is scarce.”

“Well, if you are going you can have your boat and the canoe,” said Snap, after a consultation with his chums.  “But you must give us your solemn promise not to molest us again.”

The others were perfectly willing to do that, and the rowboat and the canoe were turned over to Ham, Spink and his cronies.  Then our friends rowed out into the lake and “hung around” until the others loaded their craft and started away.

“Now remember,” called Snap after them.  “If you come back and molest us you’ll do it at your peril.”

“We won’t come back,” muttered Ham.

“You can have that ghost all to yourselves,” added Carl.  “Hope it visits your camp to-night—–­I guess you’ll be leaving in the morning just as we are doing.”  And that was all that was said by the Spink crowd.

“That ghost must have been something awful to look at,” was Shep’s remark, as he and his chums rowed back to camp.  “If ever a crowd was scared they were.”

“Well, if the ghost visits us maybe we’ll be scared too,” answered Giant.  “I don’t believe in bragging until I’ve experienced a thing.”

“Giant doesn’t want to be like the man who bragged of what he would do in case of a fire at his house,” said Whopper.  “He was going to be calm and careful and do things just so.  When the fire came he was the most excited fellow on the block, and he carried the feather bed downstairs and then went up again and threw himself out of the third story window.”

The boys were content to take it easy for the rest of the day, and for the balance of that week they did little but fish and “laze around,” as Giant put it.  Shep shot several birds and tried his skill at cleaning and stuffing them, for he took an interest in taxidermy.  Snap hung up the deer skin to be cured.