“Minnie sez she doesn’t want ter think about it at all. She feels sorry fer the McClinticks’ troubles, but she sez it cost her her job. It wuz too good fer her to keep, you see, ’n within a week the story wuz all over and so she got the gate.”
“How did the folks around here take to the story?” Brent asked, evidently interested.
“Well, ter tell the truth, folks hereabouts don’t take much stock in Minnie and they laughed about it. Called it one of her yarns, but I don’t. No, siree! Didn’t we hear the ’phone ringin’ thet night ourselves? It was a ghost, sure as ye live!”
“Or a real live person,” I put in.
“It cudn’t o’ been a live person if he sez he wuz the son!” Peters exclaimed vociferously. “’N another thing, ain’t he dead and buried ’bout a mile ’n a half frum here. Thet proves it wuzn’t a live person.”
The man was so insistent that we had to agree with him out of sheer courtesy, but as for the ghost story, of course we wouldn’t give credence to it.
“But wait a minute, Peters,” said Brent, with an alertness that quite startled Tom and me. “How is it there’s no sign of any ’phone or wires around here now?” Peters grinned as though to say he would win anyhow.
“Oh, they said in Harkness, thet Mr. McClintick hedn’t paid his bill, so they took it out right after we wuz here. ’N shortly after thet, a terrible storm brought down the wires as neat as you ever see so the ’phone people never bothered puttin’ ’em up agin, thinkin’ the Lodge wudn’t be sold fer a spell.” He arose and knocked his pipe against the bricks over the fireplace. Then he leaned forward as if he was about to tell us a secret.
“Minnie told me confidentially thet McClintick owed the ’phone people one hundred dollars and thet the ’phone number at the Lodge here wuz number one hundred too! Now, thet’s what you gentlemen wud call a coincidence, eh?”