"I don't know; but I'm afraid."
"You have been there a hundred times, and even last night?"
"I don't want to go there any more."
"There's mother; she's getting up."
"So much the worse for me," cried the child. "Let her beat me; let her kill me; but I will not go to the wood-pile—at night, above all."
"But, once more, I ask you, why not?" said Calabash.
"Well, because there's some one—"
"Some one?"
"Buried there," murmured the trembling boy.
The widow, notwithstanding her impassibility, could not repress a slight shudder; her daughter imitated her; one would have said that the two had received an electric shock.