“That was I, or rather my wife,” said the drover.
Mordecai’s conscience began to be disturbed, and disturbed consciences are the stuff out of which ghosts grow.
At the next inn, in the lovely Connecticut valley, a still more terrible story was told. A forest tavern-keeper, after this tale, had trained a huge mastiff to drown his rich guests in a pond in a wood at the back of the tavern. The strong dog had been bought of a drover named Bonny, who had treated him kindly. Years passed, and the same Mr. Bonny visited the inn, and was recognized by the dog, but not by the tavern-keeper. The latter invited Mr. Bonny to go with him to the trout-pond in the wood, and while they were on the margin of the pond he suddenly whistled to his mastiff as a signal. The dog whined and howled and ran around in a circle.
“Why don’t you do as you always do?” exclaimed the tavern-keeper to the dog in anger.
The dog’s eyes blazed; he leaped upon his master and dragged him into the pond. But his master in his struggles drowned the mastiff. Mr. Bonny witnessed the scene in horror, and seeing what it meant—for several rich drovers had disappeared from the inn and had never been heard of again—he determined to conceal the matter, as the crime could not be repeated. But the dead dog howled nights, and so drew people to the pond, and disclosed the crime.
“Life,” said the story-teller, “is self-revealing: everything is found out at last. The stars in their courses fight against a liar!”
The inward eyes of Mordecai now began to expect to see “sights.” The boy’s conscience burned. He had the ghost atmosphere.
The next time that the lusty drover tried to sell the cow that had given “fifteen quarts of milk a day” he declared that she had given sixteen quarts, and called the milker as before to witness the statement.