A rumbling noise a little resembling a human voice was heard in the distance, and the old lady shut the door, returned to her seat, and resumed her reeling.
"I—don't feel to think it is the firewood, mother; I—I think it is the souls," slowly and solemnly announced Miss Libby, who had not spoken before.
"The what? What in patience are you talking about, Libby?" severely demanded the old lady, as she briskly wound off her yarn.
"The souls, mother, the souls—the souls that do wander about without rest on this awful night."
"Well, I do think," gravely began the aged woman, laying down the ball she was winding, and taking off her spectacles, that she might speak with the more impressiveness, "I do really think, of all the foolish women in this foolish world, my two daughters is the foolishest! Here's Tabby always whimpering about the sorrowful things in this world, and Libby always whispering about the supernatural things in t'other! If you had both on you married twenty or thirty years ago, you wouldn't be so full of whimsies now! But, Libby, as the oldest of the two, and a woman nigh sixty years of age, you really ought to set a better example to your sister."
And having delivered this little lecture, old Mrs. Winterose replaced her spectacles on her nose, and resumed her reeling.
"It's all very well for you to talk that a way, mother, and it's all very right; but for all that, you know as how the old folks do say, as on this awful night, of all the nights in the year, the 'churchyards yawn and the graves give up their dead,' and the unsheltered souls do wander restlessly over the earth; and though we may not see them, they come in at our doors and stand beside us or hover over us all the night. Ugh! It do make me feel as if ice water was a trickling down my backbone only to think of it! For what if as how her soul was a wandering about here now!" continued Miss Libby, solemnly clasping her hands and rolling up her pale-blue eyes. "Yes! what if as how her soul was a wandering about here now—here, where, all unprepared to go, on just such a dismal Hallow Eve as this, it was wiolently druv out'n her body! Ah! good land! what was that?" suddenly exclaimed Miss Libby, breaking off with a half-suppressed scream.
"It was nothing but Gem's wheel stopping suddenly, as her thread snapped, you goose," said the old lady.
"Ah! but it sounded just like an awful groan, as it might be an echo of her dying groan as her soul fled from the body, and rewived by memory, if so be she should be walking now," shuddered Miss Libby.
"And surely, if any soul ever did wander over the earth anywhere, at any time, her soul, of all souls, would wander in this place of all places, on this night of all nights, when she—"