This was just what Godfrey was afraid of, and the only thing that led him to divide his ill-gotten gains with Dan. There was a dangerous light in his eyes, but controlling himself he answered, very good-naturedly:
“Wal, ye see I didn’t mean to cheat ye, don’t ye? Now go an’ git the bill broke over to Silas Jones’. I’d go myself, but if I do, he’ll want me to pay what I owe him, an’ I ain’t ready to do that yet. He can wait till we find that bar’l.”
Dan took the bill and went away, revolving in his mind a dozen wild schemes for securing undisputed possession of the whole of it. Godfrey watched him until he disappeared in the store, and then leaned on his rifle and went off into another brown study.
“The ongrateful an’ ondutiful scamp!” thought he. “He’s got the upper hand agin me, that boy has, an’ I’ve got to give him half them five dollars, or have my plans busted. I wish now I hadn’t told him about that bar’l. I’d go an’ dig fur it myself o’nights, only its kinder lonesome bein’ all by myself in the dark. Folks do say that all sort of critters an’ strange things is abroad arter night, an’ as I’ve seed ’em an’ felt ’em myself, I’m jest a trifle——”
Godfrey finished the sentence by shrugging his shoulders. He would not have acknowledged, even to himself, that he was afraid, but that was the plain English of it. He would hardly go to the wood-pile alone after dark. It was true that he had seen some strange things which he could not account for, and which frightened him almost out of his wits. He had seen figures flitting along the road in front of him when he returned home from the landing after dark, and on two or three occasions, something with great eyes of fire had glared at him from a fence corner behind the general’s barn, and compelled him to leave the road and go around through the fields to reach his house. On other occasions he had been suddenly and mysteriously tripped up when there was not a human being within sight of him, and his hat had been dashed from his head by invisible hands.
All these things, however, could have been satisfactorily explained, if Godfrey had only possessed the courage to inquire into them. If he had caught one of the figures which ran along the road before him and disappeared in so bewildering a fashion, he would have found that it was not a spirit, but a human being—a night prowler who had designs upon the general’s smoke-house. If he had walked up to the eyes of fire that glared so savagely at him, he would have discovered that they were simply holes in a pumpkin, which had been scooped out to admit a lighted candle, and he would have seen Don Gordon lying on the ground at a little distance convulsed with laughter. The invisible hands which knocked off his hat and pulled his feet out from under him so unexpectedly, would, upon investigation, have proved to be strong cords stretched from one side of the lane to the other, managed by the same spirit of mischief who had placed the lighted candle in the hollow pumpkin, and who had put them there for the purpose of entertaining himself at the expense of a crowd of darkies, who were expected to pass along the lane on their way home from protracted meeting.
All these things happened during the previous autumn, but Godfrey had not forgotten them. Don had then just returned from school; and the life he led on his father’s plantation was so monotonous, that he sometimes thought he could not exist much longer unless something happened to cheer him up a little. As nothing happened of its own accord, Don went to work to create opportunities to let off some of his surplus energy in a good hearty laugh; and to further this end, he made use of some of the numerous schoolboy devices he learned while at the academy. You will know how well he succeeded when we tell you that in less than a week after he began operations, the story got abroad that the general’s lane was haunted, and there was not a negro in the neighborhood who could be hired to pass through there after dark. Godfrey Evans himself would not do it. He always took to the fields.
We do not say that Don passed his leisure hours in the most profitable manner, for we know he did not. We are only telling the story of his life, and telling it as it happened not so very long ago. That Don himself knew that he might be better employed, was proved by the fact that he did all this alone, not even taking Bert into his confidence. He little thought then that his love of mischief would one day be the means of getting him into a scrape the like of which he had never dreamed of, but such was the fact; and we must hasten on to tell how it was brought about.