“Or is it the jail you will take me to, eh? Is it against the law to be a ghost?” She staggered back against the white-washed wall.
Jasper caught her in his arms.
“Here,” he cried to me, “let’s get her out of this! Put her in bed, for Heaven’s sake. We’ve been down in this cave long enough!”
“Where are you taking me?” she implored.
“To your own room,” said I; “to the gabled room over the kitchen, where you belong.”
Between us we managed her, and as I laid her down once more and stripped off the captain’s ridiculous old clothes, and dressed her in a decent nightgown and tucked her in between the linen sheets with a hot-water bottle, she said brokenly,
“Seems as if I couldn’t stand havin’ you sleep in my bed.”
“I know. It won’t be that way any more, I promise you.”
Jasper went back to his vigil on the doorstep.
Mattie looked from me to the bureau and the nailed-up door.