“Well, they kept up this tantrum for the space of two or three hundred yards, when they came to a small, low, dismal-lookin’ house, when the man gave the door a kick, that sent the latch a flyin’ off to the t’other eend of the room, and fell right in on the floor, on his face, as flat as a flounder, a groanin’ and a moanin’ like any thing, and lookin’ as mean as a critter that was sent for, and couldn’t come, and as obstinate as a pine stump.
“‘What ails you?’ sais she, ‘to act like Old Scratch that way? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to behave so to a woman. What on airth is there about me to frighten you so, you great onmannerly, onmarciful, coward, you. Come, scratch up, this minute.’
“Well, the more she talked, the more he groaned; but the devil a word, good or bad, could she get out of him at all. With that, she stoops down, and catches up his staff, and says she, ‘I have as great a mind to give you a jab with this here toothpick, where your mother used to spank you, as ever I had in all my life. But if you want it, my old ‘coon, you must come and get it; for if you won’t help me, I shall help myself.’
“Jist at that moment, her eyes being better accustomed to the dim light of the place, she see’d a man, a sittin’ at the fur eend of the room, with his back to the wall, larfin’ ready to kill himself. He grinned so, he showed his corn-crackers from ear to ear. She said, he stript his teeth like a catamount, he look’d so all mouth.
“Well, that encouraged her, for there ain’t much harm in a larfin’ man; it’s only them that never larf that’s fearfulsome. So sais she ‘My good man, will you he so kind as to lend me your arm down this awful peak, and I will reward you handsomely, you may depend.’
“Well, he made no answer, nother; and thinkin’ he didn’t onderstand English, she tried him in Italian, and then in broken French, and then bungled out a little German; but no, still no answer. He took no more notice of her and her mister, and senior, and mountsheer, and mynheer, than if he never heerd them titles, but jist larfed on.
“She stopped a minit, and looked at him full in the face, to see what he meant by all this ongenteel behaviour, when all of a sudden, jist as she moved one step nearer to him, she saw he was a dead man, and had been so long there, part of the flesh had dropt off or dried off his face; and it was that that made him grin that way, like a fox-trap. It was the bone-house they was in. The place where poor, benighted, snow-squalled stragglers, that perish on the mountains, are located, for their friends to come and get them, if they want ‘em; and if there ain’t any body that knows ‘em or cares for ‘em, why they are left there for ever, to dry into nothin’ but parchment and atomy, as it’s no joke diggin’ a grave in that frozen region.
“As soon as she see’d this, she never said another blessed word, but jist walked off with the livin’ man’s pike, and began to poke her way down the mountain as careful as she cleverly could, dreadful tired, and awful frighted.
“Well, she hadn’t gone far, afore she heard her name echoed all round her—Happy! Happy! Happy! It seemed from the echoes agin, as if there was a hundred people a yelling it put all at once.
“Oh, very happy,’ said she, ‘very happy, indeed; guess you’d find it so if you was here. I know I should feel very happy if I was out of it, that’s all; for I believe, on my soul, this is harnted ground, and the people in it are possessed. Oh, if I was only to home, to dear Umbagog agin, no soul should ever ketch me in this outlandish place any more, I know.’