“No, but he had a big club in his hand,” said Dan, whose frightened optics had magnified an ordinary walking-stick, just as they had cheated their owner into believing that the apparition, or whatever it was, had an eye of fire in the middle of his forehead.
“What sort of a club was it?” asked his father.
“O, a great big one! an’ it was all curled and twisted up like a snake.”
“I’ve seed ole Jordan walkin’ with it a million times,” said Godfrey. “He used it this yere way, didn’t he?” he added, picking up a stick, that happened to be lying near him, and imitating the energetic manner in which the old negro handled his cane.
“That’s jest the way he done,” said Dan.
“An’ he walked this way, didn’t he?” continued Godfrey, bending his back and legs, drawing his head down between his shoulders and mimicking old Jordan’s style of progression.
“Yes; that’s jest the way he walked.”
“Then it’s his haunt, an’ thar ain’t no mistake about it,” said Godfrey, throwing down the stick and pushing back his sleeves. “Jest fetch out my rifle, Dannie.”
“O, pop, what be ye goin’ to do?” gasped Dan.
“I’m goin up thar,” was the reply; and any one who had seen Godfrey when he made it, never would have imagined that only a few short hours before he had been so badly frightened, that he could not run half fast enough to suit him. He looked brave enough to meet a lion single-handed. “I want to see that thing,” he continued, “an’ I want to see it in the daytime, too—not arter dark, as I did afore!”