Here Ben paused before answering, regarding the person referred to with a look of some perplexity. "Well, she used to answer to that name, but here lately she don't answer to any when I call her; goes about like one in a traveling dream. There she stands, a-gazing at you with a far-off look in her eyes, as though you were on the other side of the Kentucky river, and not a living thing anear you. Bertha!" Here Ben elevated his voice a little. Bertha turned her eyes toward the speaker, though apparently with as little perception of his actual presence as though he were lying at the bottom of the river he had named. "There, you see how she does, and that's the way she's doing all the time. When she wakes up she won't know any more for a minute where she is than you did, before I told you. She's either in love, or fixing to be a ghost."
What young Ben Logan meant by this concluding remark were hard to imagine; unless, indeed, he had in his mind the idea of a little angel, when he said "ghost." After receiving each answer, Sprigg would pause for a few moments to consider what he had heard and assure himself of its meaning before proceeding further. Now, after a somewhat longer pause than before, he put the startling question:
"Ben, did you ever see Nick of the Woods?" To which he received the equally startling answer:
"Well, if I didn't see him to-day, it wasn't because I didn't stare with all the eyes I had. I never saw the woods behave so in all my life before. There a tree, just one tree, would fall to waving its limbs and shaking its leaves, making the liveliest flutter, and all the rest of the trees as still as mice when the cat's about. And there went smoke a-rolling up in puffs as big as feather beds, and not a sign of fire to show for it, that I could see. And there went fire a-shooting up in flames higher than my head, and not the sign of a stick of wood to show for it, that I could see. And here went shadows, skipping and dodging about, and not the sign of a living thing to do the skipping and dodging, that I could see. And there were voices all about me—some on this side, others on that; some close at my ear, and others far away—all talking the strangest gibberish, and not the sign of a living thing to do the talking, that I could see."
"Weren't you terribly frightened, Ben?"
"Well, at first I did feel queer—just a little queer, up and down the back and about the roots of my hair—but just as I had cocked my gun, and was looking about me for something to let fly at—plump! It was all gone as quick as the blowing out of a candle. Then I felt a little better, and after a short while a great deal better—real good and easy. I don't know why, but it's just so."
Each time, after giving his answer, and while Sprigg would be pausing to consider it, Ben would fill up the interval with another wag-tail shake of the hand he still held in his own, thereby lengthening out his answer with something he had omitted to express in words. Now, after two or three of the supplementary shakes, he did bethink him to put the something else in words.
"But, Sprigg, you are looking a great deal better than I expected to find you. Though I needn't wonder so much at that, either, for they wanted to feed you on trash—squirrels and birds, and I wouldn't let 'em. Tell us—me and Pow-wow—how you liked the buffalo we brought home for you yesterday?"
"Oh, very much, I am sure."