It would have been easy for
me to have drawn him out, but I felt that I did not want to
corroborate anybody else's experience; only to record my own. And
I thought it better to keep the boys from any predisposing terrors.
"We ate our supper, and then sat, patiently and expectant, around
the fire. An hour slipped away, but no disturbance; another hour
passed as monotonously. Our host read his book; only the dash of
hail against the roof broke the silence. But--"
The Doctor stopped. Since the last interruption, I noticed he had
changed the easy slangy style of his story to a more perfect,
artistic, and even studied manner. He dropped now suddenly into
his old colloquial speech, and quietly said: "If you don't quit
stumbling over those riatas, Juan, I'll hobble YOU. Come here,
there; lie down, will you?"
We all turned fiercely on the cause of this second dangerous
interruption, but a sight of the poor fellow's pale and frightened
face withheld our vindictive tongues. And the Doctor, happily, of
his own accord, went on:--
"But I had forgotten that it was no easy matter to keep these high-
spirited boys, bent on a row, in decent subjection; and after the
third hour passed without a supernatural exhibition, I observed,
from certain winks and whispers, that they were determined to get
up indications of their own.
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