In his own house he hardly felt more secure. He could not rest - he could not sleep. He stirred the embers with a trembling hand, and sat shivering over them. His wife, willing enough to believe in “harnts”* as appearing to other people, was disposed to repudiate them when they presumed to offer their dubious association to members of her own family circle.
* Ghosts.
“Dell-law!” she exclaimed scornfully. “I say harnt! Old Mrs. Price, though spry ter the las’, war so proud o’ her age an’ her ailments that she wouldn’t hev nobody see her walk a step, or stand on her feet, fur nuthin’. Her darter-in-law tole me ez the only way ter find out how nimble she really be war ter box one o’ her gran’chill’n, an’ then she’d bounce out’n her cheer, an’ jounce round the room after thar daddy or mammy, whichever hed boxed the chill’n. That fursaken couple always hed ter drag thar chill’n out in the woods, out’n earshot of the house, ter whip ’em, an’ then threat ’em ef they dare let thar granny know they hed been struck. But elsewise she hed ter be lifted from her bed ter her cheer by the h’a’th. She wouldn’t hev
her
sperit seen a-walkin’ way up hyar a-top o’ the mounting, like enny healthy harnt, fur nuthin’ in this worl’. Whatever ’twar, ’twarn’t
her
. An’ I reckon of the truth war knowed, ’twarn’t nuthin’ at all - forg, mebbe.”
This stalwart reasoning served to steady his nerves a little. And when the moon went down and the day was slowly breaking, he took his way, with a vacillating intention and many a chilling doubt, along the winding road to the scene of his fright.
It was not yet time by a good hour or more to go to work, and nothing was stirring. A wan light was on the landscape when he came in sight of the great tree prone upon the ground. And there, close to the edge of the road, as if she had stepped aside to let him pass, was the figure of a little, bent old woman - nay, in the brightening dawn, a bush - a blackberry bush, clad in a blue-checked apron, a red plaid shawl, and with a neat sunbonnet nodding on its topmost spray.
His first emotion was intense relief. Then he stood staring at the bush in rising indignation. This sandy by-way of a road led only to his own house, and this image of a small and bent old woman had doubtless been devised, to terrify him, by some one who knew of his mission, and that he could not return except by this route.