“Hain’t they ketched yer dad yit?” he queried.
“No, nor they won’t,” Chip rattled on, as if such killing were a daily occurrence in the woods. “He’s a slick ’un, they say, an’ now he’s got Pete’s money, he’ll lay low.”
“Worse and worse, and more of it,” Uncle Joe thought.
“You must ’a’ had middlin’ lively times up in the woods,” he said. “Did yer dad kill anybody else ’sides yer mother ’n’ this man?”
“He didn’t kill mother,” Chip returned promptly; “he used to lick her, though, but she got killed in a mill, ’n’ I wisht it ’ud bin him. I wouldn’t ’a’ bin an orfin then. Say,” she added, as they entered a woods-bordered stretch of road, “did ye ever see spites here?”
“Spites,” he responded, now more than ever in doubt as to her sanity, “what’s them?”
“Why, they’s just spites–things ye can’t see much of ’ceptin’ it’s dark. Then they come crawlin’ round. They’s souls o’ animals mostly, Old Tomah says. I’ve seen thousands on ’em.”
Uncle Joe shifted his quid, turned and eyed the girl once more. First, a wild and wofully mixed tale of murder, and then spookish things! Beyond question she had wheels, and he resolved to humor her.
“Oh, yes, we see them things here now ’n’ then,” he said, “but it takes considerable licker to do it. We hain’t had a murder, though, for quite a spell. This is a sorter peaceful neck o’ woods ye’re comin’ to.”
But Chip failed to grasp his quiet humor, and all through that twenty-mile autumn day stage ride she chattered on like a magpie.