Forgetting in the first shock of supernatural added to natural fear that they stood fully exposed in the faint moonlight, they looked at each other, while a cold chill of dread seemed to check even the power to think. Manson was the first to recover, and with a quick, "We must hide," almost hissed, dropped on all fours behind a bush, followed by his comrade. That the motion betrayed them to watchful eyes is certain, for the next instant, out from the dark thicket across the gorge there leaped a flash of red fire, and the ping of a bullet, cutting leaves and twigs above them, told its own tale. Too scared to think of returning the fire, or conscious that to do so was unwise, they slowly crawled deeper into the scrub and along the top of the hillock. All that night they kept together, and how long it was until the gray light of coming dawn lifted a little of their burden of fear, no one who has never skulked along a picket line in darkness and dread can imagine!
When the relief guard came, Manson and his mate tried to discover where their night-prowling enemy had crossed that narrow gorge, if he had crossed at all, but could not. Whether ghost, or shadow, or flesh-and-blood enemy had walked on fog in the faint moonlight before them, they could not tell, and never afterward were they able to determine. The only certain fact was that some one had fired at them, and fired meaning to kill! Wisely, too, they agreed to keep the ghost part of that experience a secret, and none of their comrades ever knew they had seen a man walking upon the fog.
CHAPTER XIV.
BESIDE THE CAMP FIRE.
Both Manson's and Pullen's regiments were encamped along the edge of a belt of pine woods, and after their creepy experience together on picket duty, they naturally sought each other as often as possible. There is a 'witching romance lingering about a camp fire in the woods that stimulates the imagination, and when these two newly made friends could meet for an evening's visit beside theirs, many a tale of youthful experience and boyish escapade was exchanged.
"Speaking of ghosts," said Manson, one evening, "I do not believe in their existence exactly, and yet there is a strange fascination about the idea that I can't understand. Now I do not believe we saw a man walking on fog the other night, and yet I can't resist the desire to hunt the matter out and discover what sort of an optical illusion it was. I am not at all certain the man who took a shot at us was the one we saw across the ravine, either. I had an experience once when I was about nine years old, that, in a way, tainted my mind with the ghost idea, and perhaps that is the reason why the possibility of seeing one affects me in the way it does. A couple of miles from the farm where I was reared there stood an old deserted ruin of a house known as the Tim Buck place. It was hidden away behind hills and woods and reached from the highway through a half-mile lane, thick grown with bushes. Here, years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck, who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being haunted, and no one ever went near it after dark. A couple of 'coon hunters told how they had taken refuge in it from a sudden shower at night, but left in a hurry when they heard some one walking on the chamber floor above. Some one else said they had seen a white figure walking on the ridge-pole just at dusk. All this was current gossip in the town, and believed by many.
"My parents had sense enough not to tell me, but when I was old enough to be sent to the district school, I heard all this, and more, too; and the worst of it was I believed all I heard. I had never been near the house, but when I heard the stories, I got another boy for company and went to look at it from the top of a near-by hill. As I grew older the fascination of the place kept increasing, and one day it overcame my fear and all alone I paid it a visit.
"The house was a ruin—roof fallen in, floor rotted away and pitched into the cellar: only the walls were standing, and the beams and rafters, like the ribs of a skeleton, still in place. I remember the well-sweep was in the usual position, and seemed to me like a warning finger pointing at the bleaching rafters. It took me a good half hour to muster courage enough to go within ten rods of the ruin, but I finally did, and at last, scared half to death, and trembling, found myself peeping in at one window. It was dark in there and smelt queer, and I, a nine-year-old boy, fully expected to see some new and horrible spook appear at any moment. How long I stood there I never knew, for I forgot all else except the belief that if I waited long enough I should see something queer. I did, too, for all at once I saw in an inner room, where a closet door stood half open, a white, bony hand reach out from behind it, take hold, and seemingly shut that door from the inside! I didn't wait any longer, you may be sure, and never stopped running until I came in sight of home, two miles away!"