“Hold up!” says Mark. “Don’t go p-p-plungin’ down there like a buck sheep. Go cautious. We want to sneak up without bein’ seen. Here’s the idee. That there is a haunted castle where there’s a wicked magician l-l-livin’, and he’s goin’ to cast some kind of a spell on the king we’re workin’ for. We got jobs with a king to p-pertect him from all evil. See? And we got word this here m-magician is up to somethin’ underhand. Maybe he’s goin’ to turn the king into a statue made out of lard or somethin’, and then run off with the p-p-princess and swipe the kingdom. Now, we hain’t got no magic, so all we kin do is sneak up on him when he hain’t lookin’ and grab him before he can make any magic passes and gag him before he can utter any magic words. That’s the notion. When we got him tied up and bound and all t-t-that, we kin lock him in a dungeon with n-nothin’ to eat but bread and water till the magic is starved out of him.” “Kin you starve magic out of a feller?” says Tallow. “You kin s-s-starve ’most anythin’ out,” says Mark. “All right,” says I. “Let’s git at it. That king may be turnin’ to lard this minute, and what good is a king that hain’t nothin’ but a lump of lard?” “Use him for pie crust,” says Tallow, who wasn’t much on imagining things. Well, we moseyed down to the mill. “We’ll s-s-separate into two parties,” says Mark. “Plunk and me will go up the log-slide at this end of the m-m-mill. Tallow and Binney kin come in from the other end. That way we’ll catch him between us.” So we done that. Mark and I crept cautious around to the log-slide and went up it, and it was a job for a cat in that darkness. Once we was inside the mill it was a lot worse. I’ve been in the dark once or twice, but that’s the first time I was ever in dark that was so dark you had to push it away from you. Honest, I could reach out and grab chunks of it, and it felt like it would pack like snow. When we got inside we stopped and listened, but there wasn’t a sound. Then Mark whispered in my ear: “Go along s-soft. That there magician’s got ears like a cat.” “Kin he see in the dark?” says I. “You bet,” says he. “Wisht I had that gift,” says I, for just then I banged my shin against a timber and it hurt like all-git-out. We knew that mill pretty well by heart, and found our way around without falling down any holes or sitting down on any saws. Pretty soon I heard a soft, stealthy kind of a noise right over in front of me, and I grabbed Mark’s arm. Mark heard it, too, because he reached out and touched me, as much as to tell me to keep still. Then we went ahead. Pretty soon I reached for Mark and I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t hear him. Well, if you think that wasn’t a lonesome feeling I’ll eat a brick. But I was in for it, and I wasn’t going to turn tail and scoot if that mill was so crowded with magicians that they was stepping on one another’s toes, so I went ahead a step at a time, stopping to listen about every minute.