“No; but _he_ is,” returned Chips, with a jerk of the head towards Jan. “I turned tail at the last.” “Don’t you believe him,” says Jan, grinning. “I wouldn’t take him with me; he’s too blind, is Chips. Wait till he starts specs; then I’ll take you both if you like. There’s nothing in it. You can see one end or the other half your time; it’s only a short bit where you can’t see either, and then you can feel your way. But by gum it makes you mucky!” “It’d make you muckier if you met a train,” Evan suggested, with a sly stress on Jan’s epithet. “But I didn’t, you see.” “You jolly nearly did,” Chips would have it. “The express came through the minute after he did, Devereux.” “Not the minute, nor yet the five minutes,” protested Jan. “But here we are at the end of the village, and if that isn’t the haunted house I’ll eat my cap!” It stood behind a row of tall iron palings, which stand there still, but the deadly little flat-faced villa was pulled down years ago, and no other habitation occupies its site. The garden was a little wilderness even as the three boys first saw it through the iron palings. But a million twigs with emerald tips quivered with joy in the breezy sunshine. It was no day for ghosts. The house, however, in less inspiriting circumstances, might well have lent itself to evil tradition. Its windows were foul and broken, and some of them still flaunted the draggled remnants of old futile announcements of a sale by auction. Its paint was bleached all over, and bloated in hideous spots; mould and discoloration held foul revel from roof-tree to doorstep; the whole fabric cried for destruction, as the dead for burial. “I doubt they won’t have got much of a bid,” said Jan, pointing out the placards. “Yet it must have been a tidy little place in its day.” He had forced the sunken gate through the weedy path, and was first within the disreputable precincts. Evan was peering up and down the empty road, and Chips was watching Evan with interest. “I shouldn’t come in,” said Chips, “if I were you, Devereux.” “Why not?” demanded Evan, with instantaneous heat. “Well, it is really out of bounds, I suppose, and some master _might_ be there before us, having a look round, and then we should be done!” Before an adequate retort could be concocted, Jan told Chips to go to blazes, and Evan showed his indignation by being second through the garden gate, which Carpenter shoved ajar behind them. Jan was already leading the way to the back of the house. Instinctively the boys stole gently over the weeds, though there was but a dead wall on the other side of the main road, and only open fields beyond the matted ruin of a back garden.