“Why, you see they carried me in their long, bony arms, away up through the storm, up to the graveyard, and they put me on a grave, and gathered all about me, and they made me swear that I would shoot him until he was dead, and if you take my pistol away the ghosts will stay right by you till you give it up. I will kill him. Let me show you how.”
“Never mind to-night,” said Blanche, growing a little uneasy.
“But I will shoot.”
“Dear, dear, I never was no coward, but I can’t stand all this, and I’d rather be out in the biggest kind of a storm than to be pestered in this way, and if you ain’t afraid I’ll go somewhere, you know,” said Mrs. Morris.
“Oh, let her go and find the ghosts,” said Bessie. “I’m not afraid of you, Miss Robin, for I know you are 214 not crazy, even if they do say you are; but, you see, robins never hurt any one; just let her go. She is a coward anyway.”
Mrs. Morris wrapped herself in a thick shawl and hood, and, starting by the way of a path that led through the meadow, she hurried along as fast as the darkness would allow, until she reached the house of Mr. Graves, when she informed them of Bessie’s visit.
“Why,” said Eliza, “I was in her room not two hours ago, and left her fast asleep. She must have gone out of the window, and down the porch, but I do not see how she could do it on such a night as this.”
“Crazy lunatics will think of plenty of cunning things,” said Mrs. Morris; “you jest ought to hear the stuff she’s been a-tellin’. Of course we don’t believe a word of it; ’cause it’s likely she don’t know what she’s a-talkin’ about.”
“No,” Mrs. Graves said, in a trembling voice, and wiping the tears from her eyes; “no, she does not know what she is saying.”
“It makes it dreadful bad for you folks ’cause I s’pose it keeps you a-worryin’.”