"Why, no!" said he, recovering from his sudden excitement, "she's not dead, or she wouldn't keep on troublin' me. She's been livin' in Toledo, these ten year."
"I beg your pardon, my friend," said I; "but I don't know what to think of what I heard last night, and I suppose I have the old notion in my head that all ghosts are of persons who have been murdered."
"Oh, if I had killed her," he groaned, "I'd 'a' been hung long ago, an' there 'd 'a' been an end of it."
"Tell me the whole story," said I. "It's hardly likely that I can help you, but I can understand how you must be troubled, and I'm sure I pity you from my heart."
I think he felt relieved at my proposal,—glad, perhaps, after long silence, to confide to another man the secret of his lonely, wretched life.
"After what you've heerd," said he, "there's nothin' that I don't care to tell. I've been sinful, no doubt,—but, God knows, there never was a man worse punished.
"I told you," he continued, after a pause, "that I come from the Western Reserve. My father was a middlin' well-to-do farmer,—not rich, nor yit exactly poor. He's dead now. He was always a savin' man,—looked after money a leetle too sharp, I've often thought sence: howsever, 't isn't my place to judge him. Well, I was brought up on the farm, to hard work, like the other boys. Rachel Emmons,—she's the same woman that haunts me, you understand,—she was the girl o' one of our neighbors, an' poor enough he was. His wife was always sickly-like,—an' you know it takes a woman as well as a man to git rich farmin'. So they were always scrimped, but that didn't hinder Rachel from bein' one o' the likeliest gals round. We went to the same school in the winter, he an' me, ('t isn't much schoolin' I ever got, though,) an' I had a sort o' nateral hankerin' after her, as fur back as I can remember. She was different lookin' then from, what she is now,—an' me, too, for that matter.
"Well, you know how boys an' gals somehow git to likin' each other afore they know it. Me an' Rachel was more an' more together, the more we growed up, only more secret-like; so by the time I was twenty an' she was nineteen, we was promised to one another as true as could be. I didn't keep company with her, though,—leastways, not reg'lar: I was afeard my father 'd find it out, an' I knowed what he 'd say to it. He kep' givin' me hints about Mary Ann Jones,—that was my wife's maiden name. Her father had two hundred acres an' money out at interest, an' only three children. He'd had ten, but seven of 'em died. I had nothin' agin Mary Ann, but I never thought of her that way, like I did towards Rachel.
"Well, things kep' runnin' on; I was a good deal worried about it, but a young feller, you know, don't look fur ahead, an' so I got along. One night, howsever,—'t was jist about as dark as last night was,—I'd been to the store at the Corners, for a jug o' molasses. Rachel was there, gittin' a quarter of a pound o' tea, I think it was, an' some sewin'-thread. I went out a little while after her, an' follered as fast as I could, for we had the same road nigh to home.
"It weren't long afore I overtook her. 'T was mighty dark, as I was sayin', an' so I hooked her arm into mine, an' we went on comfortable together, talkin' about how we jist suited each other, like we was cut out o' purpose, an' how long we'd have to wait, an' what folks 'd say. O Lord! don't I remember every word o' that night? Well, we got quite tender-like when we come t' Old Emmons's gate, an' I up an' giv' her a hug and a lot o' kisses, to make up for lost time. Then she went into the house, an' I turned for home; but I hadn't gone ten steps afore I come agin somebody stan'in' in the middle o' the road. 'Hullo!' says I. The next thing he had a holt o' my coat-collar an' shuck me like a tarrier-dog shakes a rat. I knowed who it was afore he spoke; an' I couldn't 'a' been more skeered, if the life had all gone out o' me. He'd been down to the tavern to see a drover, an' comin' home he'd follered behind us all the way, hearin' every word we said.