Cape Breton Tales

by Harry James Smith

"Now one night in December, when all those four were in the house alone, the beginning of their punishment arrived, and surely nothing more strange was ever heard of in this world.

"'Ah, mon Dieu!' cries out the married woman all of a sudden—'mon Dieu, what is that!'

"They all looked where she was looking, and what do you think they saw? There was a chair standing with three legs in the air, and only the little point of one on the floor.

"The old woman pushed a scream and jumped to her feet and went over to it, and with much force set it back on the floor, the way a chair is meant to stand; but immediately when she let go of it, there it was again, as before, all on one leg.

"And then, there cries out the younger woman again, with a voice shrill as a frightened horse that throws up its head and then runs away—'Oh, mère Bucheron, mère Bucheron,' cries she, 'the chair you were just sitting in is three legs in air too!'

"And so it was! With that all the family got up in terror; but no sooner had they done that than at once all the chairs behaved just like the first, which made five chairs. These chairs did not seem to move at all, but stood there on one leg just as if they were always like that. Those Bucherons were almost dead with fright, and all four of them fled out of the house as fast as ever their legs could carry them—you would have said sheep chased by a mad dog—and never stopped for breath till they reached Gros Nez.

"And pell-mell into old Pierre Leblanc's house all together, and shaking like ague. Hardly able to talk, they tell what has happened; and he will not believe them but says, well, he will go back with them and see. So he does, and they re-enter the house together, and look! the chairs are all just as usual.

"'You have been making some crazy dreams,' says Pierre, rather angry, 'or else,' he says, 'you have something bad in your hearts.' And with that he goes home again; and there is nothing more to be told about that night, though I daresay none of those wicked persons slept very well.

"But that was only the beginning of what happened to them during that winter. Sometimes it would be these knockings about the roof, as of someone with a great hammer; and again it was as if they had seen a face at the window—just an instant, all white, in the dark—and then it would be gone. And often, often, the chairs would be standing as before on one leg. The table likewise, which once let fall a great crowd of dishes, and not a few were broken. But worst of all were these strange sounds that made themselves heard in the cupboard, like the hand of a corpse going rap—rap, rap—rap—rap, rap,—against the lid of its coffin. You may well believe it was a dreadful fright for those four infamous ones; but still they would do nothing, because of their desire to keep all that money and buy things with it.

"Everybody on the Cape soon knew about what was happening at the Bucherons', but some pretended it was to laugh at, saying that such things did not happen nowadays; and others said the Bucherons must have gone crazy, and had better be left alone—and their arms and legs would sometimes keep jerking a little when they talked to anyone, as my stepmother told me a thousand times; and they had a way of looking behind them—so!—as if they were afraid of being pursued. So however that might be, nobody would go and see them.