“Let us see,” said Abraham, holding his chin in a thoughtful way; “it was after that you swore off liquor?”
“Yes,” said Robert. “The other boys hardly knew the liquor cask they had left in the woods next day, if I have heard right.”
“You need not laugh, boys,” said Duncan, solemnly; “there is no fun in seeing a ghost, and I had not taken more than a few drinks. Besides, you know how, next year, when Jake, and Dick, and some others were in the same camp, they heard Sam’s old chest, that we had left there, creak as though some one had sat on it, and how the shanty door was taken off the hinges and held upright in the middle of the floor. And the black dog that left no track in the snow, but used to run along the ridge pole of moonlight nights, when nobody was in the shanty; and, finally, how the roof was all taken off when Tom’s party was there, and although it was covered with snow, not a drop fell inside. No, no, spirits are no laughing matters.”
“Especially prime spirits,” suggested the cook.
“Jamaica or Holland, but I never heard of New Brunswick spirits before,” said Robert.
“Well, I can just tell you one thing,” said Duncan, aroused; “there is not one of you dare sleep in that shanty alone. Come, I will pole any of you down there to-morrow that would like to try. Who will go?”
A dead silence fell on the party, for, truth to tell, though bold enough round the fire together, the dwellers on the Miramichi are a good deal given to superstition, and not one of the party but some time or other had fancied he heard Sam’s ghost shouting to his team of a stormy night near the landing.
“Well,” said Abraham, slowly, “I never saw but one ghost. It was a moonlight night, with a little snow on the ground, and I was alone, crossing a cleared lot where the stumps stood pretty thick, when I noticed, crouched down behind one of them, a figure of some sort that looked like an old woman. It had no bonnet or hat, nothing but a cap on its head; it wore a long, tattered dress, that blew about in the wind, while I could just make out a pair of thin, white arms; but her face was black as a coal. It is no use to say I was not scared, for I think I was. There were some crazy people about at that time, who had escaped from the madhouse; but I was pretty sure I could outrun any of them, ’specially a woman, and I knew it was no use running from ghosts, so I concluded the best thing to do was to keep right along and pretend to take no notice; but, do my best, I could not keep my eyes off the old woman. I tried to whistle, but not a sound would come. I only blew a little, and not very steady at that. I tried to sing, but the first note I uttered made me jump ten feet; I thought it was somebody else’s voice, as sure as fate. I had sidled off as far as I could on account of a gully there was, and did not like to go down that for fear she should think I was afraid. The distance between us was growing less and less, and as I watched her sharper than ever, she appeared to make one or two moves, and then stop; but all of a sudden, she jumped up, threw off her clothes, and started after me. I uttered one yell, and turned; but, as luck would have it, caught my foot in a root under the snow, and rolled headlong down the steep side of the gully.
“I do not know what I said, I think I prayed; but I made considerable noise, anyway, and poked my head into a bush, and tried to burrow under the snow. This lasted some time; but hearing nothing more, and not finding myself killed, my courage returned; I took out my head, and slowly crawled up the bank. Peering carefully over the edge, I saw a stump where the old woman had been crouching, burnt at the top, with some snow on it; there was a dead bush and roots at the bottom, while a little further off lay a quantity of dead birch bark, waving about in the wind. ‘Abe,’ said I to myself, ‘you have been an awful fool to take a fired stump, a little snow, and some birch bark for a ghost. Never do so again.’ And I never have, and have never been so scared from that day to this.”
After a hearty laugh at Abraham’s fright, Robert was called upon, and responded as follows: