Then she tells me. The night of the day after we camped there, her and Miss Hampton was out fur a walk. We didn't have any show that night. They passed right by our camp, and they seen us there by the fire, all three of us. But they was in the road in the dark, and we was all in the light, so none of the three of us seen them. Miss Hampton was kind of scared of us, first glance, fur she gasped and grabbed holt of Martha's arm all of a sudden so tight she pinched it. Which it was very natcheral that she would be startled, coming across three strange men all of a sudden at night around a turn in the road. They went along home, and Martha went inside and lighted a lamp, but Miss Hampton lingered on the porch fur a minute. Jest as she lit the lamp Martha hearn another little gasp, or kind of sigh, from Miss Hampton out there on the porch. Then they was the sound of her falling down. Martha ran out with the lamp, and she was laying there. She had fainted and keeled over. Martha said jest in the minute she had left her alone on the porch was when Miss Hampton must of seen the ghost. Martha brung her to, and she was looking puzzled and wild-like both to oncet. Martha asts her what is the matter.
"Nothing," she says, rubbing her fingers over her forehead in a helpless kind of way, "nothing."
"You look like you had seen a ghost," Martha tells her.
Miss Hampton looks at Martha awful funny, and then she says mebby she HAS seen a ghost, and goes along upstairs to bed. And since then she ain't been out of the house. She tells Martha it is a sick headache, but Martha says she knows it ain't. She thinks she is scared of something.
"Scared?" I says. "She wouldn't see no more ghosts in the daytime."
Martha says how do I know she wouldn't? She knows a lot about ghosts of all kinds, Martha does.
Horses and dogs can see them easier than humans, even in the daytime, and it makes their hair stand up when they do. But some humans that have the gift can see them in the daytime like an animal. And Martha asts me how can I tell but Miss Hampton is like that?
"Well, then," I says, "she must be a witch. And if she is a witch why is she scared of them a-tall?"
But Martha says if you have second sight you don't need to be a witch to see them in the daytime.
Well, you can never tell about them ghosts. Some says one thing and some says another. Old Mis' Primrose, in our town, she always believed in 'em firm till her husband died. When he was dying they fixed it up he was to come back and visit her. She told him he had to, and he promised. And she left the front door open fur him night after night fur nigh a year, in all kinds of weather; but Primrose never come. Mis' Primrose says he never lied to her, and he always done jest as she told him, and if he could of come she knowed he would; and when he didn't she quit believing in ghosts. But they was others in our town said it didn't prove nothing at all. They said Primrose had really been lying to her all his life, because she was so bossy he had to lie to keep peace in the fambly, and she never ketched on. Well, if I was a ghost and had of been Mis' Primrose's husband when I was a human, I wouldn't of come back neither, even if she had of bully-ragged me into one of them death-bed promises. I guess Primrose figgered he had earnt a rest.