"And what if she does?" said Sandlot. "She and him has been boardin' with Mother Smith, ain't they? Ain't Mother Smith been handin' the Chicken money when he needed it, because he said he was workin' up this job with us? I bet the Chicken owed Mother Smith a hundred dollars, and when he don't come back, then what? Sal will say she ain't got no money because the Chicken quit her, and Mother Smith will--" "Well, what?" asked Wixy. "She'll send word to every crook in the country to spot the Chicken, and you know it. And when word comes back that there ain't no trace of him--" "You've lost your nerve, that's what ails you," said Wixy scornfully. "No, I ain't," Sandlot insisted. "I've heard plenty of fellers tell how Mother Smith keeps tabs on anybody that tries to do her out of ten cents even. Why, maybe the Chicken promised to come back that night and pay up. I bet he did! And I bet he _was_ sour on Sal. And I bet Mother Smith knew it all the time, and that when he didn't come back that night she sent out word to spot him or us. I bet you!" "You've lost your nerve!" said Wixy drunkenly. "You never did have no nerve. You're so scared you're seein' ghosts." "All right!" said Sandlot, rising. "I'll see ghosts, then. But I'll see them by myself. You can go--" "Goo'-bye!" said Wixy carelessly, and finished the last drop in his bottle. "Goo'-bye, ol' Sandlot! Goo'-bye!" Sandlot hesitated a moment and then arose and, after a parting glance at Wixy, struck out across the drying floor of the brick-yard, and was lost in the darkness. Wixy blinked and balanced the empty bottle in his hand. "He's afraid!" he boasted to himself. "He's coward. 'Fraid of dark. 'Fraid of ghosts. Los' his nerve. I ain' 'fraid." He arose to his feet unsteadily. "Sandlot's coward!" he said, and threw down the empty bottle with a motion of disgust at the cowardice of Sandlot. The bottle burst with a jangling of glass. On the loose board roof Philo Gubb raised his head suddenly. For an instant he imagined he was a disembodied spirit, his body having been dissolved in benzine, but as he became wider awake he was conscious of a noise beneath him. Wixy was shifting twenty or thirty bricks that had fallen from the kiln upon a truss of straw, used the last winter to cover new-moulded bricks to protect them from the frost against their drying. He was preparing a bed. He muttered to himself as he worked, and Philo Gubb, placing his eye to a crack between the boards of the roof, tried to observe him. The darkness was so absolute he could see nothing whatever. He heard Wixy stretch out on the straw, and in a minute more he heard the heavy breathing of a sleeper. Wixy was not letting any cowardice disturb his repose, at all events, and Philo Gubb considered how he could best get himself off the roof.