“Listen!” cautioned Arthur.

“Oh! what did you think you heard?” asked Billy, with a gasp.

“It must have been voices somewhere ahead of us,” came the answer.  “The men are talking it over, most likely.”

“Debating whether they’ve got the nerve to go a step further and enter the haunted castle,” chuckled Alec.  “Let’s move on, and get a squint at the bold trespassers, Hugh.”

Accordingly once more the whole party started to move ahead, foot by foot.  All the woodcraft they had managed to pick up in previous exploits was brought into play as they crept along softly.

“Stop!” Hugh gave the low order, finally.

“I see them, Hugh,” announced Alec, eagerly.

“Show me where,” begged Billy, pushing himself forward.

A few seconds later Arthur was heard to say disdainfully: 

“Why, it looks to me as if they might be only a pair of Weary Willies, who had wandered up here from tramping the railroad ties.  They must have heard about a fine house lying idle here, and have come to camp out for a spell.  You can see they’ve got a chicken dangling by the neck, and some old tomato cans they mean to make coffee in.  Whew! but they are a tough looking pair, I tell you.”

Alec looked, and sniffed disdainfully.

“Here’s where we’re up against it good and hard, fellows,” he remarked, softly.  “The question is, do we want to stand for that couple of greasy hoboes keeping us company while we camp out here in the deserted castle?  Everybody say his mind, and majority rules, you know.”

“Excuse me, if you please,” muttered Arthur, with a shudder.  “I’d sooner sleep in a pigpen than alongside such human animals as those unclean hoboes.”

“Why,” remarked Billy, aghast at the thought, “they might rob us of our blankets; or worse, of our precious grub, which would be what I’d call a calamity without equal.”

“We’ve just got to bounce them, that’s plain,” said Monkey Stallings.  “Hugh, you remember what you the same as promised me?”

“Oh! if you think you can start something that will rid us of the pair,” the scout master told him, “go to it right away.  If you want us to help, say the word, Monkey.”

Already the other was feverishly attacking his pack, which he had tossed upon the ground.  He soon found what he was looking for, to judge from the satisfied exclamation that passed his lips.

“Tell us what you’ve got there, Monkey,” urged Alec.

“Yes, that’s do,” added Billy, anxiously, “because we want to be on our guard.  If it throws a scare into those tramps it might work just as bad with some other fellows I know, unless they were warned beforehand.  Show your hand, Monkey, please.”

“Oh! shucks! it’s only a sort of wild-goose call I tried to make from directions I read in a little book,” confessed the ingenious one.  “It don’t seem to imitate a wild honker much, but say, I c’n make the most unearthly sounds come out of this hollow bone you ever listened to.  Why, it nigh about freezes my own blood when I try the call in the pitch dark.  Now watch and see what happens.”