In the Camp of the Black Rider

There was only the faintest stir as the boys followed Buck's lead in tossing their blankets aside and joined Ted at the bushes. Following the direction which he had indicated, they found that what he had said was the truth. Close beside a tall tree, on the bank of the creek, stood a figure shrouded entirely in white.

The figure was motionless at the time, intently regarding the silent camp before him. From the direction in which his coming lay the boys guessed that he had come up on the far side of Bear Creek and had crossed over the stones at the spot where Ted had previously crossed them. The sight of the almost dead fires and the strange silence of the camp was giving the would-be ghost food for thought, though he must have expected that the boys would be asleep at the time of his coming. For two or three minutes, a space of time which to the boys seemed an age, he stood looking across the cleared space before the tents and then he began to work his way nearer to the empty camp shelters, keeping always close to the trees which skirted them.