But reports of the prowess of the club on the previous night had been carefully spread by Mr. Coffin. He had told everybody he came across how Armstrong had sat and smoked right under the tramp's tree while the clock struck twelve, and how Billet had spent nearly an hour by the gate of the Squire's park, challenging the groom's ghost to show up, and making the avenue echo with his laughter; and so forth: so that the members of the new club had become heroes. Thus, one by one, the villagers were attracted to drop in at the "Threshing Machine" to gaze reverentially at the fearless ghost-defiers, and ask them all about it. "It must hav' give yer a bit of a creepy feelin' when the clock began to strike?" said the saddler. "Me? Golong with yer! 'Ope _I_ ain't sech a turnip-liver as ter be frightened at bogies!" replied Armstrong, scornfully. "Yur! D'ye take us for a set o' babies?" asked Billet, witheringly. "Yah!" exclaimed Joe Murzle. "Wot next?" Then the admirers stood drinks to the heroes; and by the time the latter got up--with more or less difficulty--to go home, there wasn't one among them who would not have given a week's earnings to meet the most creepy ghost about. But the next morning they were silent once more; and Peter looked gloomily over the fence at Billet. "Mighty queer about this 'ere pig o' mine, _that's_ wot it is!" said he. "Bin ailing, he has, ever since yesterday morning." "Hum!" said Billet. "We-el--if you ask _me_--I tell yer plain as I do b'leeve my roomatics come on wuss night afore last, and that's pat." Then they were silent, shaking their heads for several minutes. "I'll tell yer," said Peter. "'Umbug it may be; an' truck it may be; but there's things as is best let alone, and that I _do_ think. Thur ain't no kind o' weak-mindyness nor credibility about _me_; but I says, wot's the objeck o' goin' a-spillin' o' salt, an' crossin' knives, an' settin' down thirteen?" [Illustration: "MIGHTY QUEER ABOUT THIS 'ERE PIG O' MINE."] "Ar!" said Billet, eagerly, "that's wot I ses--let sleepin' dogs lie, ses I; and then yer won't git bitten, I ses!" "I've got a kind o' notion as things are a-going somehow queerish like," said Armstrong, passing along the lane at that moment. "Do me if I can git the wind right way round into the mill-sails this mornin' nor yet yesterday; and what on earth shed make that there lot o' flour mouldy--well! That there pig's tail o' yourn don't look kind o' right--it's a-hangin' out straight as a dip. Wot's ailin'?" Peter and Billet looked at each other and shook their heads. Then Joe Maydew came along, and told how he had his doubts about them turkeys of his being quite as they should be, and how Jem Baker the carrier's horse had gone lame the day before; and how other suspicious things were happening.