The man said, “Wa’l, they stayed at th’ deacon’s house ’n’ one night they wuz out with a lantern in the middle of the night, under the big tree near th’ deacon’s haouse. Steub Berry, he ’laowed they wuz buryin’ treasure thar. Some folks had it them two strangers wuz Mexican spies ’n’ others reckoned they wuz army deserters. Th’ ole deacon, he jes’ laughed and said we couldn’ guess. He wouldn’ deny nuthin’. All of a sudden, _ker-bang_, they disappeared jes’ like that ’n’ some folks said th’ deacon murdered both uv ’em ter git th’ treasure. My wife, she allus had it, they come off some ranch or other with a lot uv stealin’s. Wa’l, ’twas a nine days’ wonder ’n arter that folks kinder fought shy of th’ deacon.” Brent said, “And he’s dead now?” “Oh, deader’n a mummy,” the man said. “When the world war come some folks said as haow that pair might a been German spies all th’ while, kind uv studying ’raound. But young Snookbeck he says if old Ebenezer had anything hid it would be in his Bible, en’ ’s long ’s ’tain’t thar, ’tain’t nowhere. But that’s treasure hid somewhere, I say, ’cause them wuz mighty funny doin’s of them strangers. Yer goin’ ter th’ reunion over t’ ’he Cross-roads?” CHAPTER XXX—WE MAKE A PROMISE As soon as we had started, Brent said, “Well, it doesn’t look half bad, does it?” “Do you know who those fellows were? Do you know who those fellows were?” our young hero fairly screamed. “I think they came from Mars,” Brent said; “that’s the way it looks to me.” I said, “You can joke but it’s pretty serious.” “They were _smugglers_ that’s what they were,” Pee-wee shouted. “They were either smugglers or book-agents,” Brent said. “In either case they deserved to be murdered. Maybe they were introducing a new kind of soap——” “You make me sick,” Pee-wee yelled; “there’s treasure somewhere and we’re going to find it! It’s at HW limit, it said so, HW means something about _hollow well_, I bet you.” Brent said, “Maybe it means hot waffles; there’s a whole table d’hote dinner in that paper. Maybe it means Hamburger wheat cakes. Anyway, the Ohio River is a long way from Barrow’s Homestead.” Then Brent got kind of serious, not _very_ serious, but kind of serious—as serious as he could. And he said we should promise him that we wouldn’t think any more about that dark, mysterious paper, or talk about it to the other fellows until we got all through at Grumpy’s Crossroads and reached Indianapolis so he could get hold of a map. Because if we couldn’t find any stream named Snake Creek running into the Ohio River, he didn’t want the fellows to be disappointed. He said there was no use of our going on a wild goose chase. You can bet we kept our promise to Brent, but I guess Pee-wee didn’t have any more sleep till we reached Indianapolis. But anyway, he had a pretty good appetite. He buried some treasure every night—ice cream sodas at the reunion.