At nightfall, Sam stealthily ventured forth to reconnoitre.

He came back with the report that the woods and swamps were clear and that the searchers, if such they were, had gone away.
"The house, since Davy's grandma's bones were stored away in that cellar for several moons, has always been thought to be haunted.

The fools probably thought they saw a ghost--an' they're runnin' yet." Then for the first time Rosalie realised that she was in the haunted cabin in the swamp, the most fearsome of all places in the world to Tinkletown, large and small.

Not more than three miles from her own fireside! Not more than half an hour's walk from Daddy Crow and others in the warmth of whose love she had lived so long! "It's gettin' too hot here for us," growled Sam at supper.

"We've just got to do something.