Ruth Fielding Down East Part 20

But that night Jennie exhibited what Tom called her "scarefulness" in most unmistakable fas.h.i.+on, and never again could she claim to be brave. She gave her chums in addition such a fright that they were not soon over talking about it.

The three college girls had cots in a small shack that Mr. Hammond had given up to their use. It was one of the shacks nearest the sh.o.r.e of the harbor. Several boat-docks near by ran out into the deep water.

It was past midnight when Jennie was for some reason aroused. Usually she slept straight through the night, and had to be awakened by violent means in time for breakfast.

She was not startled, but awoke naturally, and found herself broad awake.

She sat up in her cot, almost convinced that it must be daylight. But it was the moon s.h.i.+ning through a haze of clouds that lighted the interior of the shack. The other two girls were breathing deeply. The noises she heard did not at first alarm Jennie.

There was the whisper of the tide as it rolled the tiny pebbles and sh.e.l.ls up the strand and, receding, swept them down again. It chuckled, too, among the small piers of the near-by docks.

Then the listening girl heard footsteps--or what she took to be that sound. They approached the shack, then receded. She began to be curious, then felt a tremor of alarm. Who could be wandering about the camp at this grim hour of the night?

She was unwise enough to allow her imagination to wake up, too. She stole from her bed and peered out of the screened window that faced the water.

Almost at once a moving object met her frightened gaze.

It was a figure all in white which seemed to float down the lane between the tents and out upon the nearest boat-dock.

Afterward Jennie declared she could have suffered one of these spirit-looking manifestations in silence. She crammed the strings of her frilled nightcap between her teeth as a stopper!

This spectral figure was going away from the shack, anyway. It appeared to be bearing something in its arms. But then came a second ghost, likewise burdened. Gasping, Jennie waited, clinging to the window-sill for support.

A third spectre appeared, rising like Banquo's spirit at Macbeth's feast.

This was too much for the plump girl's self-control. She opened her mouth, and her half-strangled shriek, the partially masticated cap-strings all but choking her, aroused Ruth and Helen to palpitating fright.

"Oh! What is it?" demanded Helen, bounding out of bed.

"Ghosts! Oh! Waw!" gurgled Jennie, and sank back into her friend's arms.

Helen was literally as well as mentally overcome. Jennie's weight carried her to the straw matting with a b.u.mp that shook the shack and brought Ruth, too, out of bed.

CHAPTER XV

AN AMAZING SITUATION

"'Ghost'?" cried Ruth Fielding. "Let me see it! Remember the campus ghost back at old Briarwood, Helen? I haven't seen a ghost since that time."

"Ugh! Get this big elephant off of me!" grunted her chum, impolitely as well as angrily. "_She's_ no ghost, I do a.s.sure you. She's of the earth, earthy, and no mistake! Ouch! Get off, Heavy!"

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned the plump girl. "I--I saw them. Three of them!"

"Sounds like a three-ring circus," snapped Helen.

But Ruth was peering through the window. She saw nothing, and complained thereof:

"Jen has had a nightmare. I don't see a thing."

"Nightmare, your granny!" sputtered the plump girl, finally rolling off her half crushed friend. "I saw it--them--_those_!"

"Your grammar is so mixed I wouldn't believe you on oath," declared Helen, getting to her own bare feet and paddling back to her cot for slippers and a negligee.

"O-o-oh, it is chilly," agreed Ruth, grabbing a wrap, too.

"Do tell us about it, Jennie," she begged. "Did you see your ghost through the window here?"

"It isn't my ghost!" denied the plump girl. "I'm alive, ain't I?"

"But you're not conscious," grumbled Helen.

"I can see!" wailed Jennie. "I haven't lost my eyesight."

"Stop!" Ruth urged. "Let us get at the foundation of this trouble. You say you saw----"

"I saw what I saw!"

"Oh, see-saw!" cried Helen. "We're all loony, now."

Ruth was about to ask another question, but she was again looking through the window. She suddenly bit off a cry of her own. She had to confess that the sight she saw was startling.

"Is--is that the ghost, Jennie?" she breathed, seizing the plump girl by her arm and dragging her forward.

Jennie gave one frightened look through the window and immediately clapped her palms over her eyes.

"Ow!" she wailed in m.u.f.fled tones. "They're coming back."

They were, indeed! Three white figures in Indian file came stalking up the long dock. They approached the camp in a spectral procession and had she been awakened to see them first of all, Ruth might have been startled herself.

Helen peered over her chum's shoulder and in teeth-chattering monotone breathed in Ruth's ear the query:

"What is it?"

"It--it's Heavy's ghost."

"Not mine! Not mine!" denied the plump girl.

"Oh!" gasped Helen, spying the stalking white figures.

It was the moonlight made them appear so ghostly. Ruth knew that, of course, at once. And then----

"Who ever saw ghosts carrying garbage cans before?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the girl of the Red Mill. "Mercy me, Heavy! do stop your wailing. It is the chef and his two a.s.sistants who have got up to dump the garbage on the out-going tide. What a perfect scare-cat you are!"

"You don't mean it, Ruth?" whimpered the plump girl. "Is that _all_ they were?"

Helen began to giggle. And it covered her own fright. Ruth was rather annoyed.