The apparition did resemble the crown of a mob-cap with knots of black ribbons at the sides. I saw, almost as plainly as I had beheld her daughter’s wraith, the form hidden by the wall, picking her way over the brier-grown enclosure.
I do not know how much longer we lived at the Bragg house. Sure am I that I never paid a second call upon the denizens of the half-acre defended by the brick wall.
Years afterward, my mother told me the true tale of the old lady’s pet cat that would not leave her mistress’s grave, having followed in the funeral train down the long alley, and seen the coffin laid in the ground on the day of the funeral. The dumb beast haunted the burying-ground ever after, living on birds and field-mice, and starved to death in a deep snow that lay long on the frozen ground the second winter of her watch.
Why the four-year-old child did not lose what wits were hers by nature, or become a nerveless coward for the rest of her days, under the stress of influences never suspected by her parents, was due, probably, to a strain of physical and mental hardihood inherited from a dauntless father.
It must have been shortly after this incident that, coming into the dining-room one morning, I heard my mother say to my father:
“My dear, Frank has the Western fever!”
Frank Wilson, a nice boy, the son of a neighboring planter, was my father’s bookkeeper and an inmate of our house. He was very kind to me, and had won a lasting place in my regard as the maker of the very best whistles and fifes of chincapin bark of any one I had ever known. They piped more shrilly and held their shape longer than those turned out by my father and by various visitors who paid court to my young lady cousins through me. So I looked anxiously at the alleged sufferer, startled and pained by the announcement of his affliction. He was eating his breakfast composedly, and answered my father’s “Good-morning—and is that true, my boy?” with a pleasant laugh. There was not a sign of the invalid in look, action, or tone.
“I can’t deny it, sir!”
I slipped into my chair beside him, receiving a caressing pat on the hand I laid on his arm, and hearkened with greedy ears for further particulars of the case, never asking a question. Children of that generation were trained to make their ears and eyes do duty for the tongue. I comprehended but a tithe of the ensuing conversation. I made out that the mysterious fever did not affect Frank’s appetite and general health, but that it involved the necessity of his leaving us for a long time. He might never come back. His proviso in this direction was, “If I do as well as I hope to do out there.”
When he had excused himself and left the table, my father startled me yet more by his answer to my mother’s remark: “We shall miss him. He is a nice boy!”