"Well, now, I don't know," said Mr. Dickey argumentatively. "I hev knowed certain folks that it seems to me would stick to their ugliness alive or dead, and, though I've never seen no appearances of any kind, as I may say, I can believe jist as easy that some of 'em come back for mischief as that others come back for good."
There was a few minutes' constrained silence after this remark. Mr. Dickey's first wife had been what is popularly known as "a Tartar," and there was a generally current rumor that as the last shovelful of earth was patted down on her grave he had been heard to murmur, "Thanks be to praise, she's quiet at last." The idea of her reappearance in her wonted haunts was indeed a dismaying one, especially as Mr. Dickey had recently married again, and, if the gossips knew anything about it, was repeating much of his former painful experience. The silence, which was becoming embarrassing, was finally broken by the schoolmaster.
"Had you any more experiences of the kind you have just related, Uncle Jabez?" he asked, in tones of such deep respect and lively interest that Uncle Jabez responded, with gratifying promptness,—
"Plenty, plenty, though perhaps them two that I've just told you was the most strikin'. But it always seemed to me, after that first time, that Lavina was on hand when anything went wrong or was likely to go wrong; and ef I was to tell you all the scrapes she's kep' me out of and pulled me out of, I should keep you settin' here all night. There was one more," he continued, "that struck me a good deal at the time. It was about money, like the fust one, in a different sort of way. It was durin' those days when specie was so skurce and high that it was quite a circumstance to get a piece of hard money. There come along a peddler in a smart red wagon, with all sorts of women's trash packed into it, and Gracie took it into her head to want some of his things. It happened to be her birthday that day, and, as she didn't often pester me about clothes, I told her to choose out what she wanted, up to five dollars' worth, and, if the feller could change me a twenty-dollar note, I'd pay for it. He jumped at it, sayin' he didn't count it any trouble at all to give change, the way some storekeepers did, and that he always kep' a lot on hand to oblige his customers. I will say for him that it seemed to me he give Gracie an amazin' big five dollars' worth, and when he come to make the change he handed out a ten-dollar gold piece, or what I then took to be such, as easy as if he'd found it growin' on a bush, and said nothin' whatever about the premium on it. Perhaps I'd ought to have mentioned it, but it seemed to me it was his business more'n mine: so I jest took it as if it was the most natural thing in life, and he went off. I thought I might as well as not get the premium on it before it went down the way folks said it was goin' to: so, after dinner, I harnessed up, and drove down to the post-office,—it was kep' in the drug-store then, the same as it is now,—and when I handed my gold piece to the postmaster, which was also the druggist, and said I'd take a quarter's worth of stamps, and I believed gold was worth a dollar fifteen just now, he first smelt of it, and then bit it, and then poured some stuff out'n a bottle onto it, and then handed it back to me with a pityin' smile that somehow riled me more'n a little, and he says, says he,—
"'Somebody's fooled you badly, Uncle Jabez. That coin's a counterfeit. Do you happen to know where you got it?'
"'I know well enough,' I says, and I expect I spoke pretty mad, for I felt mad. 'I got it of a travellin' peddler, that's far enough away by this time, and if you're sure it's bad I'm that much out of pocket.' He seemed right concerned about it, and ast me if I hadn't no clue that I could track the peddler by; but I couldn't think of any, and I went home a good deal down in the mouth. But Gracie chirked me up, as she always does, bless her! and she made me a Welsh rabbit for supper, and some corn muffins, and a pot of good rich chocolate, by way of a change, and we agreed that, as she'd a pretty big five dollars worth and as the rest of the change was good, we'd say no more about it, for it would be like lookin' for a needle in a hay-stack to try to track him.
"'Why, father,' she says, 'I don't so much as know his name: do you?'
"I told her no, I didn't; that if I'd heard his name I disremembered it, but that I didn't think I'd heard it. And then that very night come another visit from mother, and she told me all about it. She come the way she always did, and when she spoke the last time, close to, as you may say, she says,—
"'I wouldn't give up that ten dollars so easy, if I was you, father. That peddler's name is Hanigan,—Elwood Hanigan,—and he'll be at the State Fair to-morrow. Now, do you go, and you'll find his red wagon with no trouble at all; and jest be right down firm with him, and tell him that if he doesn't give you good money in place of the bad he foisted off on you you'll show him up to the whole fair, and you'll see how glad he'll be to settle it.'
"And with that she laughed jest as natural as life, and I heard no more till Gracie knocked on my door in the morning."