" He rose. "I'm going down, rustle some wood
and build a fire in that stove--you two kids have got to
dry those clothes of yours and get warmed up or we'll
have a couple of hospital cases on our hands."
Once again rose a chorus of pleas and objections. Oh,
wouldn't he wait until daylight? See! the dawn was
even then commencing to break. They didn't dare go
down and they begged him not to leave them up there
alone.
At this Dopey Charlie spoke up. The 'hop' had com-
menced to assert its dominion over his shattered nervous
system instilling within him a new courage and a feel-
ing of utter well-being. "Go on down," said he to Bridge.
"The General an' I'll look after the kids--won't we bo?"
"Sure," assented The General; "we'll take care of 'em."
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Bridge; "we'll leave
the kids up here and we three'll go down. They won't
go, and I wouldn't leave them up here with you two
morons on a bet."
The General and Dopey Charlie didn't know what
a moron was but they felt quite certain from Bridge's
tone of voice that a moron was not a nice thing, and
anyway no one could have bribed them to descend into
the darkness of the lower floor with the dead man and
the grisly THING that prowled through the haunted
chambers; so they flatly refused to budge an inch.
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