As they entered the house, both Major Welch and Ruth stopped on the threshold, with an exclamation. Before them stretched one of the most striking halls Ruth had ever seen. At the other end was an open door with a glimpse of green fields and blue hills in the distance; but it was the hall itself that took Ruth’s eye. And it was the picture of the man in the space just over the great fireplace that caught Major Welch. The “Indian-killer” again stood before him. Clad in his hunter’s garb, with the dark rock behind him, his broken rifle at his feet, his cap on the back of his head, and his yellow hair pushed from under it, his eyes fastened on Major Welch with so calm and yet so intense a look that Major Welch was almost startled. That figure had suddenly obliterated the years. It brought back to him vividly the whole of his former visit.
Ruth, impressed by the expression of her father’s face, and intensely struck by the picture, pressed forward to her father’s side, almost holding her breath.
“I see you’re like most folks, ma’am; you’re taken first thing with that picture,” said Still; then added, with a half laugh, “and it’s the only picture in the batch I don’t really like. But I jist mortally dislikes that, and I’d give it to anybody who’d take it down from thar, and save me harmless.”
He went off into a half reverie. The Major was examining the frame curiously. He put his finger on a dim, red smear on the bottom of the frame. Memory was bringing back a long train of recollections. Hardly more than ten years before, he had stood on that same spot and done the same thing. This hall was thronged with a gay and happy and high bred company. He himself was an honored guest. His gracious host was standing beside him, telling him the story. He remembered it all. Now—they were all gone. It was as if a flood had swept over them. These inanimate things alone had survived. He ran his hand along the frame.
The voice of his host broke in on his reflections.
“That thar red paint I see you lookin’ at, got on the frame one day the picture fell down before the war. A nigger was paintin’ the hairth right below it; it wa’n’t nailed then—and a gust of wind come up sudden and banged a door and the picture dropped right down in the paint. Mr. Gray, who used to own this place, was a settin’ right by the winder where his secretary used to stand, and I had jest come back from the South the day befo’ and was talkin’ to Mr. Gray about it in the hall here that minute. ‘Well,’ says I to him, ‘if I was you, I’d be sort o’ skeered to see that happen’;—because thar’s a story about it, that whenever it comes down the old fellow in the grave-yard gits up, and something’s goin to happen to the man as lives here. ‘No,’ he says, ‘Hiram (he always called me Hiram), I’m not superstitious; but if anything should happen, I have confidence in you to know you’d still be faithful—a faithful friend to my wife and boys,’ he says, in them very words. And I says to him, ‘Mr. Gray, I promise you I will, faithful. And that’s what I’ve done, Major, I’ve kept my word and yet, see how they treat me! So after I got the place I nailed the picture in the wall—or rather just before that,” he said in his former natural voice, “and it ain’t been down since, an’ it ain’t comin’ down neither.”
“But does that keep him from coming on his horse as they say? Has he ever been seen since you nailed the frame to the wall?” Ruth asked.
“Well, ma’am, I can only tell you that I ain’t never seen him,” said their host, with a faint, little smile. “Some says he’s still ridin’, and every time they hears a horse nicker at night around here they say that’s him; but I can’t say as I believes it.”
“Of course you cannot,” said the Major, a little abruptly, “for you know it isn’t he; you have too much sense. A good head and a good conscience never see apparitions.” The Major was still thinking of the past.