“Wait a minute! Don’t be foolish! Of course I’m not dead, though I’m in pretty bad shape after what that scoundrel Barsky did to me. Have they been looking for me, Rad?”
“Yes, Massa Tom—dat is, ef you is Massa Tom,” he added, as a qualifying remark. “Dey has been done lookin’ fo’ you. But we done thought you gone off to see Massa Damon, maybe, and maybe you done took dat Barsky with you, ’case he’s done gone, too!”
“Yes, I reckon he’s gone all right!” muttered Tom. “But I’ve been around here all the while, Rad. Barsky knocked me senseless, bound me, and dropped me into the cistern under the old shop. I just managed to get out through the tunnel.”
“Yes, sah, Massa Tom. I’s mighty glad you done got out. But is you suah—is you quite suah—Massa Tom, dat you isn’t a ghost?”
“Of course I’m sure!” laughed the young man. “What makes you think I’m a ghost?”
“ ’Case as how you’s all white like.”
Then Tom looked down at his clothes and saw that he was covered with a white powdery substance which must, in the darkness, have given him a weird appearance, especially to the superstitious colored man.
“It’s chalk dust, or something like that,” said Tom, as he slapped at his coat sleeves and trouser legs, thereby setting free a haze of white, powdery stuff. “I remember now that there are soft white rocks in the earth of the cistern and the tunnel. I must have brushed off a lot of the stuff on my clothes as I came along. No wonder you took me for a ghost.”
“Yes, sah, dat’s jest whut you done look like,” said Eradicate.
“Well, you know now that I’m no ghost, don’t you?” asked Tom, as he continued to get rid of the white dust on his clothes.