"Dat don't belong to nobody; dat's haunted."
"Haunted, Jasper! that is impossible. There are no such things as haunted places."
"Well, massa," he replied, his faith still unshaken, "dat's what I was tole long, long years ago when I was a chile. Ye could hear noises comin' fum da like distress, and dem sounds war jined wid de talkin' ob men."
"Very likely, but such sounds came from persons on the island, and they were living, just as you and I are."
"Dar war sounds," answered my boatman, "but da warn't no people on dat island. Dem sounds warn't ob dis world."
Such an opinion could not be weakened, for my dusky companion had been raised in this local superstition and it was as firmly rooted as was his faith in future forgiveness, and so I merely inquired:
"Is there a house there, Jasper?"
"Yes sar," said he, promptly, "da am a big squar one right in de middle ob it."
"We must go and see what it looks like, and try to learn where those sounds came from."