Down in the yard the voice kept up its dreadful din. Mary rushed down the steps like a flash, and as suddenly back again. "Miss Kershaw, would you mind just kissing me once?" A quick warm touch on her pale lips, and she was gone; it was all in the space of a long breath. * * Her way was down a slight inclination and her swift, light feet carried her with incredible speed. One terrified glance at the open gate showed her the enemy lashing himself at the farther end of the enclosure, with the scattered dust and leaves rising about him as he pawed the ground. The gates were heavy and wide apart; the right-hand leaf swung shut, and then, darting across the opening, she pushed the left forward and clasped it, and springing up drew down the heavy cross-bar, and the gates were shut! * * "He's in, Miss Kershaw," said Mary, "but the worst is to come! How under the sun can they ketch him? Can you keep still if I go up the road and watch for 'em? They're most sure to drive in by the farm-yard gate if they come Chester way, and if they come upon him unbeknownst, Heaven help 'em!"
"Go Mary, go; don't think about me at all," said Mrs. Kershaw. * * *
"Not until you are in your chair, and promise to stay there, ma'am," said Mary. "Young Doctor's got trouble enough on his hands without your bein' hurt. If you hear Meadow King tearing the gates down, and me a-screechin' my life out, don't you stir!"
(Mary goes to warn them and stops their entrance. James the farmer takes command. Raymond carries an axe and Bob a stick. They open the gates Mary had closed. The brute rushes forward. At this moment James with a rope he had carried, undertakes to lasso the bull but misses and falls back, facing the foe but pinioned in the angle of a beam and the side-wall; one of the mad King's horns imbedded in the beam, the other projecting in terrible proximity, while the unspeakably angry, brutal face of the beast is only a few inches from his chest.
At this moment, Ray seized his axe.) His hat had fallen off and his face was stern and ghastly white as he watched like a lion his gigantic prey; until coming with long powerful steps close enough to strike, he gave an agonizing look of dread at James, and then brought down one tremendous crashing blow, straight, strong and true, between those cruel horns, and the Meadow King sank like a loosened rock upon the floor, pulling his head loose by his own weight.
David Young.
"Why, as to that, said the engineer,
Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear,
Spirits don't fool with levers much,
And throttle-valves don't take to such;
And as for Jim,—
What happened to him
Was one-half fact and t'other half whim!"
—Bret Harte.
David Young is principally known as the reviser and publisher of "The Morristown Ghost" in 1826, but he was also the compiler of the well-known "Farmer's Almanac", published first in 1834, and he wrote a poem of thirty-four pages in two parts, entitled "The Contrast".
The original volume of "The Morristown Ghost" was published in 1792, by whom, it is not certainly known. It gave the names of the "Society of eight", their places of meeting, and all the proceedings of the Society. The copies were bought up and destroyed, says tradition, by the son of one of its members, one lone volume not being obtainable, but this cannot be distinctly traced at present. There was published in 1876, by the Messrs. L. A. and B. H. Vogt, a fac-simile copy of the original history of "The Morristown Ghost" without the names of the original members, "with an appendix compiled from the county records". The following is the title page: