The old man stopped talking, and acted as though he were about to start off, when the boy asked him where he was going on the Wakarusa to fish, and he said:
"I don't know just where I'll wind up. I have fished in every hole in Wakarusa from way above the Wakarusa falls down stream nearly to Lawrence, and sometimes I go to one place and sometimes to another. I've fished for bullheads, too, and for sunfish, in every place that the water is deep enough from the place where Berry Creek starts, over in the coal banks by Carbondale, down to the Sac and Fox spring and all along Lynn Creek, especially in the part that's full of boulders and little round pebbles, with here and there a riffle made by a broken flat rock. And boy, I want to tell you something — some days you can catch fish like you've been catching 'em this morning, and some days you can't. I've seen days so dull that even the bite of a crawfish was welcome."
The old man started off, and then came back and took the boy by the shoulder and almost shook him as he said:
"Don't tell anyone that you saw me. It's nobody's business." And then he went away.
The boy was not at all afraid, although the man was a total stranger, and looked and acted very queer. The next day he told Joe Coberly about meeting him, and Joe said:
"That old cuss is not real. He's around here every once in a while, and always has been. Nobody knows where he lives nor where he comes from or goes to. He must have been in a good humor or you wouldn't have caught so many fish, because he can give you good luck or bad luck; and there's always something strange happenin' when you hear of him around. Last night something had one of my horses out and run him nearly to death; his mane was all tied in knots this morning, and he was wringin' wet with sweat when I went into the barn; and the barn doors were all fastened just as I had left them, too. You never can tell what's goin' to happen when that old devil's pretendin' to fish up and down the creek."
The boy told the story to a number of people, and soon found that practically all of the old-timers thought just the same as did Joe Coberly, and that they believed that there was something mysterious and unreal about the fisherman he met at the bullhead hole.
II.
The boy treasured up what had been told him about the ghost fisherman, and although he had been taught at home that there were no ghosts, every story of that nature interested him. One night he was at the home of Uncle Bill Matney. It was about ten o'clock, and they were all seated around the big fire that was roaring in the fireplace. Uncle Bill was playing "Natchez Under the Hill" on the fiddle, when suddenly they heard a horse coming on a dead run over the rocky road that led toward the house. The fiddle stopped, and everybody listened, and Uncle Bill said: