Bobby’s face was flushed, and he seemed very tired, so his mother told him he had better go to bed. He was glad enough to go, but he lay a long time thinking of his knife and the water-melons, and of Uncle Ben standing there by the fence, before he went to sleep.
Bobby slept in the attic, up under the roof. There was another bed in the same attic for the hired man. There were also a great many things for which there was no room anywhere else,—large chests, piles of bedding, and things that had got past use.
Bobby got to sleep at last; but he awoke in the night—something unusual for him—after the moon had risen, and was giving just light enough to show things in the room very dimly. He opened his eyes, and almost the first object he saw caused his heart to beat very quickly. Somebody was sitting upon one of those large chests. It was a dim and indistinct form, but it looked ghostly white in the moonlight, and Bobby could not help feeling afraid. He had never seen a ghost, fairly, but he began to think now that he had one in his room.
Bobby lay and watched that ghost, feeling warm and cold by turns, till at last he was sure it was beginning to look like Uncle Ben. The wind had begun to blow, and to move the branches of the old elm outside, thus causing the moonlight to flicker fitfully in the room. It seemed as if it must be Uncle Ben! Bobby could see him laugh, though he could not hear a sound except the sighing wind and the swaying branches of the old elm, mingling dolefully with the snoring of the hired man.
The ghost laughed and shook his head by turns, and pointed his finger at Bobby, as if to say, “I’ve marked you!”
Bobby began to imagine that Uncle Ben had been run over by a cart, or killed in some way that very afternoon, and that his ghost was really there. He was almost glad it was so, for he could endure the ghost, disagreeable as he felt his presence to be, much better than meet Uncle Ben alive, with that knife in his possession.
So he shivered, and sweat, and reasoned himself more firmly into the belief that it was Uncle Ben’s ghost that was sitting on the chest. He was glad of it, for now he could go in the morning and find his knife, and hide that other water-melon before anyone else should pass that way. Still the presence of the ghost was very disagreeable to him; and at last he ventured to go and get into the other bed with the hired man, rather than lie longer alone.
The hired man stopped snoring, turned over, woke up, and asked Bobby what was the matter.
“There’s somebody up here,” said Bobby, ashamed to own that it was a ghost.
“Who? where?” and the hired man sat up and looked around.