A strange sensation thrilled through the fireside group one of these mornings when Amos James came up from the mill, and as he smoked with them asked suddenly, all unaware of the tragedy, 'What ailed 'Cajah Green ter leave the Big Smoky in sech a hurry?'
'Wh-wh-at d'ye mean?' growled Pete in startled amaze.
And then Amos James, still unconscious of the significance of the recital, proceeded to tell that shortly after daybreak on last Wednesday morning he heard a 'powerful jouncin' of huffs,' and looking out of the window he saw Micajah Green on his big grey horse, flying along the valley road at a tremendous rate of speed. Before he could open the window to hail him, man and horse were out of sight.
It was a silent group that Amos left, all meditating upon that swift equestrian figure, pictured against the dreariness of the rainy dawn, and the grey mist, and the shadowing mountains.
'Amos seen a ghost,' said Pete presently. He looked dubiously over his shoulder, though the morning sunshine came flickering through the door, widely ajar.
'That ain't nuthin' oncommon,' said the old man sturdily. Then he told a ghastly story of a legal execution—that the criminal was seen afterward sitting in the moonlight under the gallows on his coffin-lid; and other fearful fantasies of the rural mind, which, morbidly excited, will not accept the end of the rope as a finality.
It was only when Obediah Scruggs came to their house searching for his nephew, saying that Hiram had not been seen nor heard of since he had set out one evening to visit them, that a terrible premonition fell upon Groundhog Cayce. His iron will guarded it for a time, till some one journeying from Shaftesville reported having seen there Micajah Green, who was full of a terrible story of a midnight attack upon him by the Cayce tribe, from whom he had miraculously escaped in the midst of the struggle and darkness, he declared, and more dead than alive. Then mysteriously and with heavy presage Pete and his father made a pilgrimage to the cave. They pried up the boulder over the cavity. They heard the deep water held in the subterranean reservoir still sighing and echoing with the bubbling of the mountain spring. On the surface there floated a hat—Hi Kelsey's limp and worn old hat.
They never told their secret. They replaced the boulder, and sealed their lips.
The old man began to age rapidly. His conscience was heavier than his years. But it was a backwoods conscience, and had the distortions of his primitive philosophy. One day he said piteously:
'It air a dreadful thing, Pete, ter kill a man by accident.'