“I sat in de seat whistlin’ ‘De Cows is in de Pea Patch,’ and a-thinkin’ of Sarah Jamison, what was afterwards my wife, when I felt de off fore wheel go ‘kersush’ in a hole up to de hub. I’d made seventeen miles out ob Han’sboro. I did some cussin’, an’ den went to de fence, about twenty yards off, an’ took out a rail to prize up de wheel. Den I saw I was at Mister Gibbet’s place. I sez to myself, I’ll go up to de house an’ get old Mr. Gibbet to give me a turn. I had done gone by dar two weeks afore an’ seed de old man.
“Now, gemmen, yer listen to me, for what I’se tellin’ yer is as sure as Jinny’ll blow de horn on de las’ day. I walked up to de house an’ dar I saw a bright light inside. It showed out froo de windows, an’ I saw shadders of Miss Gibbet and Mrs. Gibbet on de window curtain—shore, honeys, shore. De front do’ was shet, an’ I steps up on ter de gallery an’ knocks wid de butt end of my whip. I didn’t knock loud, needer. God bless us all, gemmen, de lights went out like dat, an’ I hears set up a laugh, ha-ha-ha-ha. How dat set my knees a-shakin’. I opens de do’, an’ dere was no sign of anybody. I struck a match an’ all de furniture was moved out, an’ de old red curtain dat I fought I seed was in rags. De whole family was gone, for shore. I didn’t kno’ ’zactly what to think ’bout dem strange voices, but I started back to de wagon, when it lightened, an’ bress God, dar in de front yard was six graves jes’ made. Somefin’ wrong here, sed I; an’ I builds a fire by de wagon an’ digs de wheel out. Jes’ den old Squire Pasture kem along de road from Mobile, an’ he tells me de news. Ole man Gibbet cut de froats of his wife and fore chillerns an’ shoot hisself in de head outun jealousy of his wife. Dey was all buried in de front yard, an’ de house was deserted ten days befo’.
“Gemmen, when I hear dat, dem mules make de quickest time to Mobile eber seed; an’ youse can tell me dar’s no ghosts, but yo’ don’ catch me roun’ dat log house of Gibbet’s ’ceptin’ sun’s an hour high.”
Jack looked suspiciously over his shoulder into the darkness and crawled into his blanket, muttering:
“It scares dis nigger eben now to tell ’bout dat night.”
Sleep soon fell upon the camp, but the impression of old Jack’s story survived the night, and the next day he still asserted its truth.
THE SPECTRE BRIDE.
The winter nights up at Sault Ste. Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way. The silence that rests upon the solitude appears to be white also. Nature has included sound in her arrestment. Save the still white frost, all things are obliterated. The stars are there, but they seem to belong to heaven and not to earth. They are at an immeasurable height, and so black is the night that the opaque ether rolls between them and the observer in great liquid billows.
In such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is peopled to any great extent. One fancies that Cain has just killed Abel, and that there is need for the greatest economy in the matter of human life.
The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay he felt as if he were the only man in the world, so complete was the solitude through which he was passing. He was going over to attend the wedding of his best friend, and was, in fact, to act as the groomsman. Business had delayed him, and he was compelled to make his journey at night. But he hadn’t gone far before he began to feel the exhilaration of the skater. His skates were keen, his legs fit for a longer journey than the one he had undertaken, and the tang of the frost was to him what a spur is to a spirited horse.