When the boys reached the landing at the head of the stairs, they turned into Tom's room, the door of which stood invitingly open.

Bob seated himself at a table and picked up a pen, while Tom leaned over his shoulder and fastened his eyes upon the unfinished letter, to which reference was made at the close of the last chapter.

"Let's see—how far did we get?" said the latter. "I believe we were talking about a bank they were supposed to have robbed somewhere in California. Well, say that they took a pile of money—seventy thousand dollars out of it. But I say, Bob! That's awful bad printing. I don't know whether Silas can make out to read it or not."

"Then let him get somebody to help him," answered Bob. "I can't be expected to furnish him with the key, after going to so much trouble to write the letter."

"But if he can't read it, what use will it be to him?" asked Tom.

"Probably he's got friends who can spell it out for him, and I'm sure I don't care how much publicity he gives it. 'And there we took out seventy thousand dollars,'" said Bob. "Go on; what next? They went to Canada after that, didn't they? There is where all the crooks go these days."

"Put it down, anyway. 'So we went to Canady (be careful about the spelling) and staid there till the country got too hot for us.' That reads all right," said Tom, throwing himself into the big rocking-chair, and wondering, like the minister in the "One-Hoss Shay," what the Moses should come next. "Don't forget to say something about the 'hant' who guards the treasure in the cave."

"Can't you wait till I come to the cave?" replied Bob, who could not print the letter as fast as his friend could think up things to put into it. "I don't altogether approve of this ghost business, anyway. I am afraid it will scare the old fellow so badly that he will make no attempt to find the treasure that is concealed in the cave."

"Don't you worry about that," Tom replied. "All we've got to do is to word the letter so that he will believe the money is really there, and he will go after it, even if he knew that he would have to face all the ghosts that ever haunted the Summerdale hills; and their name is legion, if there is any faith to be put in the stories I have heard."

"I say, Tom," exclaimed Bob, throwing down his pen and settling-back in his chair, "wouldn't it be a joke if some of those same ghosts should take it into their heads to visit us during the winter? It must be lonely up there in the mountains, when the roads are blocked with drifts, and all communication with the outside world is cut off, and wouldn't we feel funny if we should hear something go this way some dark and stormy night—b-r-r-r?"

Here Bob uttered a hollow groan, drew his head down between his shoulders, and tried to shiver and look frightened.

"No doubt it would; but we shan't hear anything go this way—b-r-r-r," replied Tom, imitating Bob's groan as nearly as he could. "Now I think you had better go on with that letter, and I will draw the map that is to guide him in his search for the robbers' cave and plunder. We've wasted a good hour and a half already; and if we don't hurry up, we shan't be able to give him the letter to-day. Let me think a moment! There's a deep gorge about a quarter of a mile from Morgan's wood-pile, and I don't believe it has ever been explored. That would be a good place to put the cave, wouldn't it?"

Bob said he thought it would, and went on with his writing, while Tom hunted up a piece of paper and began drawing the map.

Bob pronounced it perfect when his friend presented it for his inspection, and indeed it ought to have been. There was no one in the neighborhood who was better acquainted with the hills than Silas Morgan, and if the map had guided him to a place that really had no existence, except in Tom's imagination, he would have known in a minute that somebody was trying to play a trick upon him.

The letter was finished at last, to the entire satisfaction of both the boys, and the next thing was to put it where the man for whom it was intended would be sure to find it.

Do you ask what it was that suggested to them the idea of making the shiftless and ignorant ferryman the victim of one of their practical jokes?

Simply an accident, coupled with the want of something to do, and their innate propensity to get fun out of everything that came in their way.

On the previous day they made it their business to stand guard over the English partridges and quails which Uncle Hallet had "turned down" in his wood-lot, and it so happened that they stopped to eat their lunch within a short distance of Silas Morgan's wood-pile, but out of sight of it. They heard the creaking of the ferryman's old wagon, as his aged and infirm beast pulled it laboriously up the steep mountain-side, and not long afterward the setters, which accompanied Silas, wherever he went, spied out their resting-place.

But the animals did not give tongue, as they would no doubt have done if the boys had been utter strangers to them. They thankfully ate the bits of cracker and broiled squirrel that were tossed to them, and then went back to wait for Silas.

"That man has no more right to those valuable dogs than I have," said Bob. "They're worth a hundred dollars apiece, and no one ever gave a guide that much money in return for a single day's woodcock shooting. Who is he talking to, I wonder?"

"To no one," answered Tom. "He likes to talk to a sensible man, and he likes to hear a sensible man talk; consequently, he has a good deal to say to Silas Morgan. That's the fellow he is talking to."

And so it proved. The ferryman was engaged in an animated conversation with the ferryman, asking and answering the questions himself, and so fully was his mind occupied with other matters, that it never occurred to him that possibly his words might be falling upon ears for which they were not intended.

Tom and his companion had no desire to play the part of eavesdroppers. They were not at all interested in what Silas was saying to himself—at least they thought so; but it turned out otherwise.

Having finished their lunch, they began making preparations to set out for home; but in the meantime Silas reached the wood-pile, and, leaning heavily upon his wagon, he gave utterance to his thoughts in much the same words as those we used at the beginning of this story.

"I just know that I wasn't born to do no such mean work as I've been called to do all my life," declared Silas, stooping over, and throwing the perspiration from his forehead with his bent finger. "I can't get my consent to slave and toil in this way much longer, while there are folks all around me who never do a hand's turn. They can loaf around and take their ease from morning till night, while I—wait till I tell you. Such things ain't right, and I won't stand it much longer. The other night I dreamed of that robber's cave, with piles of gold and greenbacks into it, and yesterday I read about the finding of that earthen crock that was plumb full of money; so't I know I shall be a rich man some day. 'Pears to me that day isn't so very far off, neither. If I should come up here some time and find a letter telling me where there was a robber's cave with stacks and piles of money in it, I shouldn't be at all astonished; would you?"

"Not in the least," whispered Bob, giving his friend a prod in the ribs with his elbow; whereupon Tom laid his finger by the side of his nose and winked first one eye and then the other, to show that he fully understood Bob.

"Stranger things than that have happened," continued Silas, in a voice that was plainly audible to the two boys behind the evergreens, "and I don't see why it can't happen to me as well as to anybody else. Wouldn't that be a joyful day to me, though? I'd bust up that flat the very first thing I did, and tell the fellers that tooted the horn that I was done being servant for them or anybody else. No, I wouldn't do that, either," added Silas, after reflecting a minute. "I'd give it to Dan and Joe to make a living with, and then I wouldn't have to spend any of my fortune on their grub and clothes."

"What a stingy old hulks he is!" whispered Bob, as the ferryman took a reluctant step toward the wood-pile. "I say, Tom, don't you think there is a robber's cave about here somewhere? I should think there ought to be, with so many ghosts hanging around. It don't look to me as though they could be here for nothing."

"That's what I think," replied Tom, in the same cautious whisper. "I shouldn't wonder a bit if there was a freebooter's stronghold somewhere in these mountains."

"With lots of money in it?" continued Bob.

"Piles of it," said Tom. "As much as there is in the treasury at Washington."

Bob turned toward his friend with a look of indignant astonishment on his face.

"And you knew it all the time, and never told Silas about it!" he exclaimed. "Can't you see how badly he wants it, and how confident he is that he is going to get it? You ought to have attended to it long ago."

"You're very right," said Tom, meekly. "Now I will tell you what I'll do: If you will print a letter—it must be printed, you know, for Silas can't read writing—telling how the money got into the cave in the first place, I'll draw a map that will aid him in finding it."

Bob said it was a bargain, and the two boys shook hands on it; after which they again turned their attention to the ferryman, who kept up his soliloquy while he was loading the wood on the wagon. The burden of it was that his lot in life was a very hard one, that he never worked except under protest, and that he firmly believed that the future had something better in store for him.

Tom and his companion went home, fully determined that if they lived to see the dawn of another day, Silas should find the wished-for letter in his wood-pile.

They took one night to "sleep on it," and make up their minds just what they wanted to say to him, and bright and early the next morning they went to work.

By their united efforts they finally produced the letter which we laid before the reader in the third chapter; but they were a long time about it. Every sentence and suggestion had to be weighed and discussed at length, and it was when Tom remarked that he would like to see the upshot of the whole matter, that a bright idea suddenly occurred to Bob.

"We can stay up there to-morrow, and see what he will do when he finds the letter," observed the latter, "but we can't run to the top of the Summerdale hills every day to watch him go after the money, can we? It's too far, and— Say, Tom, let's ask Uncle Hallet to make us his game-wardens."

"Oh, let's!" exclaimed Tom, who was always ready for anything that had a spice of novelty or adventure in it. "Of course, we shall have to live up there in the woods, the same as Mr. Warren's man does."

"To-be-sure. Then we shall be right on the ground, and it will be but little trouble for us to keep track of Morgan's movements. If he tries to find the cave, we may be on hand to give him a scare."

"Well, that's a black horse of another color," said Tom, looking down at the floor, in a deep study. "Silas Morgan never goes into the woods without his double-barrel for company, and he is so sure a shot that I don't think it would be quite safe for the spectre of the cave to materialize while he is around."

Bob hadn't thought of that before, nor did he stop to think of it now, because it was a matter that could be settled at some future time. It was enough for him to know that Tom was strongly in favor of the rest of his scheme, and the two posted off to find Uncle Hallet, and see what he thought about it.

The result of the conference they held with him, so far as it was reached that day, we have already chronicled. We must now hasten on and tell what happened in and around the Summerdale hills after Silas found and lost the letter, and Dan got hold it.