"Oh my head!" Nickie groaned. "I was scared skinny. Kid, let's run." Skippy was human enough to accede and they made the kitchen in one breath-taking bound. Nickie let go his hold on the other's arm. "Whew!" he said nervously. "Gimme a match." "Yeah, that's what I say," Skippy said, moving noisily about the room. "They ain't on this stove--I've felt all over. Say, you lit that lantern we took up to the attic." "Sure, I did. Wha'd I do with them matches?" Nickie asked himself desperately. It was another day before he found out, and in the interim they had decided that there was no other room in the house which offered the comparative peace of their own room. At least they could shut themselves in there. And that they did, not stopping until they had pushed their heavy bed tight against the stout oaken door. "What we afraid of, huh?" Skippy asked in a small voice. They had undressed and were in bed. "I dunno, kid!" Nickie admitted honestly. "I'm kinda broke up in a hundred pieces like, since that scream." "_Timmy's?_" "Say, was it sure enough him?" "Why, sure--gee whiz, who else...." "That's why I ast if you believe'n spooks!" "Nickie! Gee whiz, we heard Timmy talkin'--didn't he tell us twas all a trick with Devlin--didn't he say Devlin meant to kill him and...." "Yeah, an' ain't that like his dream the other night? Ain't it like he comes back in his dream an' stands under that big tree? Ain't it all in his dream how he's tellin' us up at the winder an' warnin' us, when zip, he sees this arm come out an' pretty soon he feels like he's chokin'? How do we know he ain't kicked off somehow last night an' tonight he comes back from the dead, hah?" Frightened as he was, Skippy could not help smiling into the darkness. "Say, I thought you was a real tough guy when I first spotted you. An' here you're talkin' bout spooks an' comin' back from the dead like you're a regular sissy." Nickie did not protest. Something had happened to him and he was incapable of explaining just what it was. The tough guy, as Skippy termed it, no longer existed, for Nickie had looked upon an evil which had shaken him to his very soul. He did not know it then, but the small sins which were directly responsible for his present predicament had gone, never to return. "I dunno, kid," he said, slowly, "but it's like I'm payin' for doin' what I done an' makin' my aunt cry an' worry after she brought me up. I knowed it worried her but I kep' on stubborn-like so now I got it good! Long's I live I won't never forget Timmy's scream, whether it was him'r his spook!" "Maybe it was good then that this happened," Skippy said practically. "Whether it was Timmy's ghost or not." But after a pause, he added, fearfully: "Gee whiz, Timmy _can't_ be dead!" "I think different, kid. I think he is!" "But we heard him talk, Nickie. You an' me, we heard it like we hear each other talkin' now, didn't we?"