"Zeke, d' you see that short piece of candle that was here on the shelf?"
Zeke rose and affected to look for it.
"I don't see nothin' uv it," he said at length.
"Well, if the rats ain't a-gittin' no better fast. Who'd a' believed they'd 'a' got up on the shelf?" So saying, she reluctantly lighted a fresh candle to take her butter to the spring.
By the time she was well out of the back door, Zeke, with one eye on the lethargic Britton, who was now a-doze in his chair, raked a hot coal from the ashes, and blowing it to a flame lighted his bit of candle with it. Then he quickly climbed to the loft, and opening the window-shutter put the candle in the glassless window on the side of the chimney toward Perrysburg. He was shivering for fear the old woman would see the light, though she was at the other end of the house, and he was yet more afraid that Bob would not see it before it should burn out. Hearing, at length, the crack of Bob's rifle, he extinguished the expiring wick and slipped down the ladder without arousing the slumbering old man.
"I expect they's another man shot," said Mrs. Britton, when she came back. If she had ever been a planter's wife her pronunciation had probably degenerated, though her archaic speech was perhaps a shade better than the "low down" language of Broad Run.
"Why?" asked Zeke.
"Oh! I heerd a gun go off, un guns ain't common at 9 o'clock at night. An' I thought I saw a flicker uv light in our loft jus' now, but it went out as soon as the gun went off. It made me feel creepy, like the house was ha'nted." And she again began to look on the mantel-piece for the lost bit of candle which she was loath to give up.
"I'm a-goin' to bed," said Zeke, "ghos's ur no ghos's"; and he again mounted the ladder. After he had lain on the bed with his clothes on for an hour, keeping himself awake with difficulty, he felt sure that the old couple below stairs must be sound asleep. He softly opened the square window, the wooden shutter of which made no sound, as it swung on hinges of leather cut from an ancient boot-top. Then he climbed out on the projecting ends of the sticks which composed the chimney, and cautiously descended to the ground.
"Cyrus!" said Mrs. Britton to her husband; "didn't you hear that noise?"