The two scouts paused spellbound as if in a place haunted. The figure had disappeared but they could hear the patter of its running, and once or twice a fleeting dark shadow. The breeze was freshening and conjuring every sound about the ramshackle buildings into spectral wailings. A fragment of gla.s.s falling from a window startled the listeners.

Agitated, their nerves tense, they strained their eyes for glimpses of the hurrying apparition and listened to the ghostly concert.

"It's he," said Warde; "we've got to catch him. Do you think that sound is a tree toad? _Listen!_" He pulled his hat on tighter because of the rising wind.

"First I thought it was," Roy said. "But it isn't. They make funny noises but not like that. It's off there and up high. It's not any animal--or loose boards or anything like that. Come on."

Suddenly out of the blackness arose a piercing scream. Its echo resounded from the dried boards of some building and re-echoed from another as if its terror-stricken owner had three voices. It mingled with that wailing voice, distant, aloof. Then they heard human words, sounding strange and unhuman.

"_I'm coming! Wait, I'm coming!_"

It sounded farther and farther off until it was drowned in the distant moaning.

"_It's he,_" Warde whispered, his voice tense.

"I know where it is; come on," said Roy.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BANSHEE

"What does it mean, anyway?" Warde asked, as he followed Roy, breathless and in suspense. "What are we going to do? Has he got some--some--accomplice--"

"Follow me," was all that Roy said.

"The troop--if we're in danger--"

"Never mind the troop; follow me."

Silently Roy sped along into an overgrown cross street, cutting through the doorless wreck of the Y. M. C. A. shack, over the litter within, and out on the opposite side. A tall, spectral shadow soon confronted them, whence emanated that ghostly voice, loud and beseeching, as they approached. Their nearness to it dispelled any thought of its being the inanimate sounds of wind-stirred wreckage or of some unknown living creature. It moaned and cried like no voice they had ever heard before.

Yet it was strangely human. The crying of that fleeing, bewildered apparition was silent now, and there seemed a note of gloomy solace in the low, plaintive strain.

"Come ahead," said Roy resolutely, "follow me. Not scared, are you?"

He ascended the narrow, metal ladder of the windmill, Warde following.

Upon the top was a tiny platform, and here he turned on his flashlight.

Crouched in a heap was their friend Blythe. He was in a state of frantic agitation, his whole form trembling like a leaf. His head was bowed; he clutched something in his two hands. From it dangled a cord. Several burned matches lay near him and wisps and little ma.s.ses of woven straw littered the miniature aerial platform.

Roy turned his light above to that part of the superstructure which revolved with the wind, enabling the winged wheel to keep in favorable position for revolving. The moaning voice was very near now, within arm's reach almost, and at that close range was divested of its ghostly suggestiveness.

"Look," Roy whispered, directing his light upward. There upon the movable framework was something that looked like a cigar-box. It was so placed as always to catch the breeze from the revolving fan.

"I know what it is," said Roy; "hold this light while I take it down."

He seemed to know that there was no peace for that distracted, crouching figure, as long as the weird voice from that compact little mechanism was audible. He stood upon the framework and, reaching up, dislodged the harmless box. A last dying wail accompanied his act. Then the big winged fan revolved silently above them in the dark night.

"Blythey," cried Roy gently; "look up. It's just Warde and me. What's the matter? Tell us, can't you? What's the trouble?"

"I've got her--I can see her--she called me--" was all Blythe could say.

"Did you hear her call--loud? I knew--I came--no--_no!_" he fairly screamed, as Warde tried to lift his head and discover what he held. "I came back--back to life--I was dead--you would have buried me--can't you see I'm alive--you--scouts--"

His head shook, he clutched at his breast, the hand which Roy tried to grasp trembled and was like ice. The two scouts saw that there was no use talking with him. The wretched creature was out of his senses.

Huddling in a posture of abject terror he clutched the object which he held tighter against his breast, his head bowed and shaking, his whole form in convulsion.

"Do you know where you are, Blythey?" Warde asked.

"In the lower field--where they're making hay," Blythe answered.

They tried no more at questioning him.

"We want you to come with us, Blythey," Roy said. His voice was friendly, kindly, albeit he was himself disturbed and fearful. For neither of the boys knew what this pathetic, demon-haunted creature might do next.

"We're your friends," Warde added. "Can't you get up and come with us--and go to bed. Don't you remember all about camp-fire, and Pee-wee, and all the fun we had? There isn't any voice now, it's gone away."

But for all their kindness and resolve to help him, they felt certain qualms, both of conscience and of fear. The all too conclusive proof that he was a fugitive and that his hands and disordered brain were red with blood were strengthened by this uncanny adventure.

To them the vision that he had seen, the voice that had lured him and brought him to this pitiful state were the face and voice of his victim--a woman. He had seen her, as such wretched, remorseful creatures ever do....

The big fan revolving silently above them in the brisk wind seemed almost to bespeak a kind of quiet satisfaction that it had brought his crime back home to him, and laid him low there upon that ghostly tower.

It was not without a feeling of relief that the two scouts heard the cheering voices of their comrades approaching through the darkness. They had been aroused, no doubt, by the piercing scream of Blythe.

"I'll go down," said Roy; "you stay up here, don't leave him alone."

At the foot of the ladder the leader of the Silver Foxes waited for the members of the troop. It was good to see them approach. In the darkness he could just distinguish their hurriedly donned and incomplete raiment.

He saw their looks of fear and inquiry, saw the almost panic agitation in Pee-wee's round face and sleepy eyes.

"It's all right," Roy said, trying to control his jerky, nervous speech.

"Where's Warde?"

"Shh, he's all right--Blythe--Blythe is up there--he's in a kind of fit--he's crazy--he's the--he's the one, all right--he's Darrell--shh, _wait_--don't go up. Do you see this? It's one of those banshees Harry Donnelle told us about--the kind the soldiers used to put up in the windmills in Flanders. That's what's been making the noise. It sort of--you know--spoke to him--that's what I think...."

If Roy had remembered some of the sprightly tales which their friend Lieutenant Donnelle had brought from France, he might have saved himself and his companion much fearful perplexity on that dark momentous night.

Or if they had ever been in Holland or Flanders they might have known of those novel toys, the handiwork of ingenious youngsters, that moan and wail and even pour forth their uncanny laughter when strategically placed on the tops of windmills. American soldier boys, chafing under enforced idleness in trenches and dugouts, would often beguile their time making these miniature calliopes to catch the wind. And it is not out of reason to surmise that many a warrior in the war-torn regions was startled and confounded by the aerial lamentations of these harmless little boxes of wires and crude whistles.

A cigar box, a few strips of wire, and some odds and ends of willow wood suffice for the manufacture of the Flanders banshee. There is now an American banshee with all modern improvements (patent not applied for) invented and controlled by Pee-wee Harris. But that is not a part of the present story.

CHAPTER XXIII

AFTER THE STORM