XVIII

SANDY SEES HIS OWN HA’NT

Having finished cleaning his clothes, Sandy went out to the kitchen for supper, after which he found himself with nothing to do.  Mr. Delamere’s absence relieved him from attendance at the house during the evening.  He might have smoked his pipe tranquilly in the kitchen until bedtime, had not the cook intimated, rather pointedly, that she expected other company.  To a man of Sandy’s tact a word was sufficient, and he resigned himself to seeking companionship elsewhere.

Under normal circumstances, Sandy would have attended prayer-meeting on this particular evening of the week; but being still in contumacy, and cherishing what he considered the just resentment of a man falsely accused, he stifled the inclination which by long habit led him toward the church, and set out for the house of a friend with whom it occurred to him that he might spend the evening pleasantly.  Unfortunately, his friend proved to be not at home, so Sandy turned his footsteps toward the lower part of the town, where the streets were well lighted, and on pleasant evenings quite animated.  On the way he met Josh Green, whom he had known for many years, though their paths did not often cross.  In his loneliness Sandy accepted an invitation to go with Josh and have a drink,—­a single drink.  When Sandy was going home about eleven o’clock, three sheets in the wind, such was the potent effect of the single drink and those which had followed it, he was scared almost into soberness by a remarkable apparition.  As it seemed to Sandy, he saw himself hurrying along in front of himself toward the house.  Possibly the muddled condition of Sandy’s intellect had so affected his judgment as to vitiate any conclusion he might draw, but Sandy was quite sober enough to perceive that the figure ahead of him wore his best clothes and looked exactly like him, but seemed to be in something more of a hurry, a discrepancy which Sandy at once corrected by quickening his own pace so as to maintain as nearly as possible an equal distance between himself and his double.  The situation was certainly an incomprehensible one, and savored of the supernatural.

“Ef dat’s me gwine ’long in front,” mused Sandy, in vinous perplexity, “den who is dis behin’ here?  Dere ain’ but one er me, an’ my ha’nt wouldn’ leave my body ‘tel I wuz dead.  Ef dat’s me in front, den I mus’ be my own ha’nt; an’ whichever one of us is de ha’nt, de yuther must be dead an’ don’ know it.  I don’ know what ter make er no sech gwines-on, I don’t.  Maybe it ain’ me after all, but it certainly do look lack me.”

When the apparition disappeared in the house by the side door, Sandy stood in the yard for several minutes, under the shade of an elm-tree, before he could make up his mind to enter the house.  He took courage, however, upon the reflection that perhaps, after all, it was only the bad liquor he had drunk.  Bad liquor often made people see double.