"Jim, you're coming back with us, aren't you?"
Jim looked at him.
"Hush!" says he, "don't speak so loud. You'll waken all them dead fellows."
"What d'ye mean?"
"Them dead fellows. The woods is full of them, them that can't rest. They're all around, ghosts. At night, when I'm a-sittin' over the fire, they crawl out of the darkness, an' they get close to me, closer, closer, an' they whisper things. Then I get scared an' I shoo them away."
"What do they whisper, Jim?"
"Oh say! they tell me all kinds of things, them fellows in the woods. They tell me of the times they used to have here in the valley; an' how they was a great people, an' had women an' slaves; how they fought an' sang an' got drunk, an' how their kingdom was here, right here where it's all death an' desolation. An' how they conquered all the other folks around an' killed the men an' captured the women. Oh, it was long, long ago, long before the flood!"
"Well, Jim, never mind them. Get your pack ready. We're going home right now."
"Goin' home?—I've no home any more. I'm a fugitive an' a vagabond in the earth. The blood of my brother crieth unto me from the ground. From the face of the Lord shall I be hid an' every one that findeth me shall slay me. I have no home but the wilderness. Unto it I go with prayer an' fastin'. I have killed, I have killed!"
"Nonsense, Jim; it was an accident."