Chapter XX: Stop

Suddenly something, it seemed like a shadow, crossed the window outside. If Peter's little room had been downstairs he might have thought that a spectre of the night was passing. He looked up, startled, dumbfounded. And while he gazed the tall dusky apparition passed back across the window again.

Half frightened and very curious he raised the little sash and looked out. The night was dark but the sky was filled with stars. Not a light of man's making was there in all the country roundabout. He concentrated his gaze along the back road and tried to pick out the spot where Peace-justice Fee's house was, thinking that perhaps some sign thereabout would furnish the key to this ghostly mystery. But there was not the faintest twinkle there, nor any sound of life. Only solemn, unanswering darkness. Somewhere in the woods a solitary screech owl was hooting its discordant song.

"Is--is--anybody here?" Peter asked, his voice shaking. There was no answer, nothing but silent, enveloping darkness.

Peter groped behind him for the old piece of broomstick which propped the window open, and with this in place, he leaned far out and gazed toward the little graveyard where his father and his grandfather and all the simple forbears of the lonely neighborhood had gone to their rest. Not a sound was there in that solemn little acre. He strained his eyes and tried to identify the place by Deacon Small's tall, white tombstone, but he could not make it out.

Suddenly, just above that silent, hallowed little area, a tall gray thing appeared, then disappeared as suddenly.

Peter trembled, yet gazed in fascination. He was fearful of he knew not what. Yet he could not withdraw his eyes from that spot. Had someone--some _thing_ from that little graveyard come to his window and gone back again to its musty rest? Was it--_could_ it be--?

Hardly had he the chance to think and conjure up some harrowing fear, when the dusky column appeared again, then disappeared, then appeared again. Then darkness.

Whatever put it into Peter Piper's head he never know, but quick like those very flashes occurred to him the very words that he had been saying over and over to himself but a few minutes before--saying over and committing to memory. "Three dots or flashes--S, three dots or flashes--S, three dots or flashes--"

Again it arose, that ghostly apparition, and filled the dark sky above the little graveyard. This time it remained for one, two, three, four seconds.

Peter's hand trembled now from a new kind of excitement, as he groped behind him for his one poor scout possession, the handbook. Then he reached for the lamp, but the night wind blew it out just as the tall thing came again, and stayed for several seconds.

Peter groped for the little box of safety matches which always lay near the lamp. These were the chief ornaments of his little room, the lamp and the safety matches. He held a match close over page two hundred and eighty-four while he divided his gaze between this and the next lingering visitation of that strange, long, shadowy thing over the graveyard. He struck match after match, as each blew out. Yes, that was what three short flashes meant--S. And one long flash meant T.

Suppose--_suppose_ there should be three _long_ appearances now? That would be O. Were these signs, expressed in ghostly strangeness, just the figments of Peter's excited imagination? Just the Morse Code haunting him and coloring his fancy? He put his finger on the black symbol on the page and waited.

--Two--three--then a pause.

S--T--O

His finger held upon the page trembled as he lighted another match and still another and moved his finger to another printed symbol on the page. And the long, dusty column over beyond the graveyard, came and went, now for a second, now for several, now for several again, then for one short second.

"STOP!" said Peter, his voice shaking as if indeed some ghostly spectre were upon him. Somebody, somebody was talking to him! Some scout, in real khaki attire, out in the great world?

Peter did not know where to place his waiting finger next. A mighty hand had been raised in the black, solemn night, and had said _Stop_. Had sprawled it across the open page of the heaven. Peter waited, as one waits for a spirit to give some sign. He kept his eyes riveted upon the general service code, lighting match after match and throwing them on the floor as the fickle things went out. Some day, _some day, maybe_, Peter would have a _real_ flashlight with a switch button, a flashlight of shiny nickel that he could polish, such a flashlight as he had seen a picture of in _Boy's Life_. A flashlight that would not blow out. Sometime he would--maybe....