Might not this be the same?
He had expected sometime or other to make a signal fire and give this scout voice a try-out with some simple word.

He had not expected to be aroused and called to service by its spectral, mysterious command.
What should he do?
Set it down to his own deceiving fancy and go back to his handbook?
Return to the wholesome realities of stalking and trailing which filled those engrossing pages?
Poor Peter Piper felt that he had made a sort of bold excursion from Piper's Crossroads into the realm of miracles and that he had better not let that weird apparition over beyond the graveyard dupe and mock him.

Perhaps he had been "seein' things." Yet there were the long and short flashes and they had spelled that warning message, or else he had gone out of his senses or been dreaming.

He hardly knew what to think, now that he had time to think.
His credulity soon gained the upper hand, he began to doubt his own eyes, and he was just a bit ashamed of what he was resolved to do.

At all events he would have the delight of doing it, and no one would know.
He would act just as a _real_ scout would _really_ act if the message was _real_ and _true_.
Stealing down the creaky, boxed-in stairs, he got a lantern from the kitchen and lighted it.