After this apparition had disappeared, the machinist filled his black cutty pipe, opened the door of the tool-house, and sat upon the step to smoke and ruminate and strive for a better collecting of things into their normal groupings. Later, he strolled out to the by-road to see if the hoof and wheel marks were really there; to satisfy himself beyond question that he had not been dreaming. The ocular demonstration convinced him that he was sane, sober, and awake. The hoof-prints were there, though they were by no means so gigantic as he had expected to find them; and so were the wheel ruts. “I guess I needn’t be botherin’ my head about who they was,” he muttered to himself as he went back to his seat on the tool-house door-step. “Th’ bosses’ll know that, all right, all right. But if there’s goin’ to be a whole lot of this ghost business up here, it’s me for the downstairs, even if I do have to duck every time I see old man Layne comin’ up th’ road. These moonlight picture-shows get next to my gizzard-nerve. I ain’t no ghost-killer--not me.” His pipe was smoked out and, knocking the ash from the bowl, he got up, having fresh designs upon the tool-house bed-room and the blanketed cot. But he was scarcely afoot before the sounds of wheels and hoofs came again, this time from the opposite direction. “My gosh!” he complained, “are they comin’ back? Or is it a torchlight procession of ’em? No, by jing! it’s somebody else: that horse is a black one!” More to be out of harm’s way than for any spying purpose, he slipped into the tool-house and softly closed and fastened the door. When he tiptoed to the window two other figures had entered the glade; two men, and both of them with burdens. Their movements were even more mysterious than those of the earlier visitors. The shorter of the two carried a square box, handling it by a buckled strap which encircled it, and the other had a shoulder load which Rucker could liken only to a small bundle of poles. Both burdens were quickly put down; and at Rucker’s final glimpse, obtained just as the moon was passing behind a cloud, the shorter man had gone down on his knees beside the box, and was apparently opening it. Everything turned to a blurred gray for the watcher at the square window while the cloud obscured the direct rays of the moon; and when a better light came, the taller of the two men had disappeared, and the other was standing motionless under a great oak, whose spreading branches were sadly obstructing Rucker’s line of sight. “Now, what the devil is he doin’?” was Rucker’s demand, whispered to the inner darknesses. “And where has t’ other guy skipped to, all of a sudden. By jinks! I b’lieve the short one’s sightin’ a gun; no, it ain’t a gun, either; it’s a kodak. No, I’m off again, and I hain’t got any more guesses. Now, what t’ ’ell’s the sawed-off doin’, wavin’ his arms up and down that way? By gollies, this whole mountain’s gone bug-house, ’r else I have!”