“Oh lawdy!” the ejaculation was only aspirated, and Thad brought Beauregard to a stand without speaking to him. They were at a bend of the road where it crossed the river. Above the ford, dark hemlocks arched the stream and the foot log lay in their dense shadow. Upon it something moved like a pale gray cloud, not outlined against the blackness, but softly blending with it.
Beauregard saw it too and pricked up his ears. Thad wound the reins round his right hand and even brought his left into action though with a soft apology to Suly:
“Looks like I might want all the hands I’ve got to hold him. You take a tight holt of me,” he counselled under his breath and, as the spectre neared the farther side, proceeded chidingly: “It’s powerful triflin’, Suly, to go to talkin’ ’bout ha’nts when you’re out in the woods at night—it’s tollable sure to call ’em up”—a rustling among the dry leaves under the bushes changed the course of his remarks.
“If the durn thing ’ud move a little faster, I’d drive into the water and stand a spell; witches and ha’nts and all them things is shy of water.” There was a closer scurry among the leaves and at a twitch of the reins Beauregard drew them into the ford and stopped there in obedience to another silent signal.
Above the rustling they heard a panting breath, and another ghost, a nimbler one, was on the log, a light, flying shadow against the dark, stationary ones.
“Sho,” said Suly, “it’s only a dog.” She started to whistle but Thad clapped his hand over her mouth:
“For gracious sake, Suly, don’t do that—it’s awful darin’.”
She was gurgling and spurting in an effort to regain her right of free speech when together the apparitions seemed to slip off the log upon the other side.
“I tell you it’s Colonel Ledbetter’s Dixie,” she cried as a dog frisked out into the moonlight; “and sure’s you’re born that’s little Grover Cleveland! and he’s walkin’ in his sleep again—poor little soul! Git up Beau!” She clutched at the reins, but Thad caught her hand.
“Poor little soul!” she repeated. “His gran’daddy’d go plumb distracted if he knowed that little soul was out on the mountings this time o’ night; nothin’ on him either, I reckon, but just his little shirt! Thad, if you don’t drive on right now, I’ll jump into the crick, I vow I will! I want to get my hands on him—poor little soul!”