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THE HAUNTED SHANTY.

As the principal personage of this story is dead, and there is no likelihood that any of the others will ever see the “Atlantic Monthly,” I feel free to tell it without reservation.

The mercantile house of which I was until recently an active member had many business connections throughout the Western States, and I was therefore in the habit of making an annual journey through them, in the interest of the firm.  In fact, I was always glad to escape from the dirt and hubbub of Cortland Street, and to exchange the smell of goods and boxes, cellars and gutters, for that of prairie grass and even of prairie mud.  Although wearing the immaculate linen and golden studs of the city Valentine, there still remained a good deal of the country Orson in my blood, and I endured many hard, repulsive, yea, downright vulgar experiences for the sake of a run at large, and the healthy animal exaltation which accompanied it.

Eight or nine years ago, (it is, perhaps, as well not to be very precise, as yet, with regard to dates,) I found myself at Peoria, in Illinois, rather late in the season.  The business I had on hand was mostly transacted; but it was still necessary that I should visit Bloomington and Terre Haute before returning to the East.  I had come from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, and, as the great railroad spider of Chicago had then spun but a few threads of his present tremendous mesh, I had made the greater part of my journey on horseback.  By the time I reached Peoria the month of November was well advanced, and the weather had become very disagreeable.  I was strongly tempted to sell my horse and take the stage to Bloomington, but the roads were even worse to a traveller on wheels than to one in the saddle, and the sunny day which followed my arrival flattered me with the hope that others as fair might succeed it.

The distance to Bloomington was forty miles, and the road none of the best; yet, as my horse “Peck” (an abbreviation of “Pecatonica”) had had two days’ rest, I did not leave Peoria until after the usual dinner at twelve o’clock, trusting that I should reach my destination by eight or nine in the evening, at the latest.  Broad bands of dull, gray, felt-like clouds crossed the sky, and the wind had a rough edge to it which predicted that there was rain within a day’s march.

The oaks along the rounded river-bluffs still held on to their leaves, although the latter were entirely brown and dead, and rattled around me with an ominous sound, as I climbed to the level of the prairie, leaving the bed of the muddy Illinois below.  Peck’s hoofs sank deeply into the unctuous black soil, which resembled a jetty tallow rather than earth, and his progress was slow and toilsome.  The sky became more and more obscured:  the sun faded to a ghastly moon, then to a white blotch in the gray vault, and finally retired in disgust.  Indeed, there was nothing in the landscape worth his contemplation.  Dead flats of black, bristling with short corn-stalks, flats of brown grass, a brown belt of low woods in the distance,—­that was all the horizon inclosed:  no embossed bowl, with its rim of sculptured hills, its round of colored pictures, but a flat earthen pie-dish, over which the sky fell like a pewter cover.