“You passed several streams on the way,” said Mr. Graves. “Why didn’t you stop and get a drink?”
“Oh, pap, I dassent. I can hear those words ringing in my ears now, and I wanted to get so far away that I couldn’t hear them. ‘Here I am and there I am!’ Oh, my soul!”
“Why—what are you trying to get through yourself?” inquired Mr. Graves; and if the truth must be told he drew a little closer to Peleg.
“Well, sir, I am telling you the truth when I say that that there Nat has some dealings with that Fellow down there,” said Peleg, pointing toward the ground. “He goes around looking for those papers—”
“Ah! Get out!” exclaimed Graves.
“It is a fact; and if you don’t believe it, you can just go down there and watch him as I did. He says that everything, the trees and the rocks and the leaves and the bushes, are in cahoots with him because he took such good care of old man Nickerson when he was alive, buying him tobacco and such, and that he told him what words to use while looking for those papers. Why, the branches of the trees moved and pointed out the way to him.”
Mr. Graves was completely amazed by this revelation, and seated himself on the porch beside Peleg; while S’manthy gasped for breath and found it impossible for her to say anything. She lifted her hands in awe toward the rafters of the porch for a moment, closed her eyes, and then her hands fell helplessly by her side. She shook her head but could not utter a sound.
“It is a fact, I tell you; that isn’t all I have seen, either,” said Peleg. “When we came to Manchester and Nat wanted to buy some grub and things—pap, he has ten dollars; and he wouldn’t offer me a cent of it.”
“Where did he get ten dollars?” asked Mr. Graves, in surprise.
“I don’t know. I expect it must have been some he had left that the old man gave him. He bought some grub and a pick-ax and a spade, and left them there so that I could go and get them this morning; and that set the storekeeper to going. He warned me not to let the ghosts catch me—”