Yet the figure, motionless, was there. Half a thousand people were now watching it. Bee said, "See its shoulder, Rob! It isn't touching the tree--it's inside the tree! It's leaning against something else, inside the tree!" The dark outline of the tree-trunk was steady reality; it did seem as though that shadowy shoulder were within the tree. A farmer's boy beside us had a handful of horseshoes. He began throwing them. One of them visibly went through the ghost. Then a man with a star on the lapel of his overcoat fired a shot. It spat yellow flame. Where the bullet went no one could have told, save that it hit the water of the creek. The specter was unchanged. The crowd was murmuring. A man near us said, "I'll walk up to it. Who wants to go along?" "I'll go," said Will unexpectedly; but Bee held him back. The volunteer demanded, "Officer, may I go?" "I ain't stoppin' you," said the man with the star. He retreated a few steps, waving his weapon. "Well then put that gun away. It might go off while I'm down there." Somebody handed the man a broken chunk of plank. He started slowly off. Others cautiously followed behind him. One was waving a broom. A woman shouted shrilly, "That's right--sweep it away--we don't want it here." A laugh went up, but it was a high-pitched, nervous laugh. The man with the plank continued to advance. He called belligerently, "Get out of there, you! We see you--get away from there!" Then abruptly he leaped forward. His waving plank swept through the ghost; as he lunged, his own body went within its glow. A panic seemed to descend upon him. He whirled, flailing his arms, kicking, striking at the empty air as one tries to fight off the attack of a vicious wasp. Panting, he stumbled backward over his plank, gathered himself and retreated. The white apparition was unchanged. "It was just like a glow of white light," the attacker told us later. "I could see it--but couldn't feel it. Not a thing--there wasn't anything there!" The ghost had not moved, though some said that it turned its head a trifle. Then from the crowd came a man with a powerful light. He flooded it on the specter. Its outlines dimmed, but we could still see it. A shout went up. "Turn that light off! It's moving! It's moving away!" It was moving. Floating or walking? I could not have told. Bee said that distinctly she saw its legs moving as it walked. It seemed to turn; and slowly, hastelessly it retreated. Moving back from us. As though the willows, the creek-bank, the creek itself were not there, it moved backward. The crowd, emboldened, closed in. At the water's edge we stood. The figure apparently was now within or behind the water. It seemed to stalk down some invisible slope. Occasionally it turned aside as though to avoid some obstruction. It grew smaller, dimmer by its greater distance from us until it might have been the mere reflection of a star down there in the water of the creek; then it blinked, and vanished.