“If it’s a ghost story, make it strong, Aubrey, so that not a girl will sleep tonight. Won’t the dears look pretty blinking and yawning tomorrow night? We’ll hear ’em, fellows, in the small hours of the morning, ‘Molly, Molly! I’m so frightened. I do believe someone is in my room; may I come in with you, dear?’”
“Charlie, stop your nonsense,” laughed his father, and Adonis obediently subsided.
“My father was Dr. Aubrey Livingston too,” began Aubrey, “and he owned a large plantation of slaves. My father was deeply interested in the science of medicine, and I believe made some valuable discoveries along the line of mesmeric phenomena, for some two or three of his books are referred to even at this advanced stage of discovery, as marvellous in some of their data.
“Among the slaves was a girl who was my mother’s waiting maid, and I have seen my father throw her into a trance-state many times when I was so small that I had no conception of what he was doing.
“Many a time I have known him to call her into the parlor to perform tricks of mind-reading for the amusement of visitors, and many wonderful things were done by her as the record given in his books shows.
“One day there was a great dinner party given at our place, and the êlite of the county were bidden. It was about two years before the civil war, and our people were not expecting war; thinking that all unpleasantness must end in their favor, they gave little heed to the ominous rumble of public opinion that was arising at the North, but went on their way in all their pride of position and wealth without a care for the future.
“Child as I was I was impressed by the beauty and wit of the women and the chivalric bearing of the men gathered about my father’s hospitable board on that memorable day. When the feasting and mirth began to lag, someone called for Mira—the maid—and my father sent for her to come and amuse the guests.
“My father made the necessary passes and from a serious, rather sad Negress, very mild with everyone, Mira changed to a gay, noisy, restless woman, full of irony and sharp jesting. In this case this peculiar metamorphosis always occurred. Nothing could be more curious than to see her and hear her. ‘Tell the company what you see, Mira,’ commanded my father.
“You will not like it, captain; but if I must, I must. All the women will be widows and the men shall sleep in early graves. They come from the north, from the east, from the west, they sweep to the gulf through a trail of blood. Your houses shall burn, your fields be laid waste, and a down-trodden race shall rule in your land. For you, captain, a prison cell and a pauper’s grave.”
“The dinner-party broke up in a panic, and from that time my father could not abide the girl. He finally sold her just a few months before the secession of the Confederate States, and that was the last we ever knew of her.”