“Yes,” quoth Short.

“But he ban’t a spirit yet,” replied Smallbones; “he be flesh and blood o’ some sort.  If I gets fairly rid of his body, d——­n his soul, I say, he may keep that and welcome.”

“But then, you know, he’ll haunt us just as much as ever—­we shall see him here just the same.”

“A spirit is only a spirit,” observed Smallbones; “he may live in the cabin all day and night afore I care; but, d’ye see, there’s a great difference between the ghost of a dog, and the dog himself.”

“Why, if the beast ar’n’t natural, I can’t see much odds,” observed Spurey.

“But I can feel ’em,” replied Smallbones.  “This here dog has a-bitten me all to bits, but a ghost of a dog can’t bite anyhow.”

“No,” replied Short.

“And now, d’ye see, as Obadiah Coble has said as how spirits must be laid, I think if we were to come for to go for to lay this here hanimal in the cold hearth, he may perhaps not be able to get up again.”

“That’s only a perhaps,” observed Coble.

“Well, a perhaps is better than nothing at all,” said the lad.

“Yes,” observed Short.

“That depends upon sarcumstances,” observed Spurey.  “What sort of a breakfast would you make upon a perhaps?”

“A good one, perhaps,” replied Smallbones, grinning at the jingling of the words.

“Twenty dozen tyfels, Smallbones is in de right,” observed Jansen, who had taken no part in the previous conversation.  “Suppose you bury de dog, de dog body not get up again.  Suppose he will come, his soul come, leave him body behind him.”

“That’s exactly my notion of the thing,” observed Smallbones.

“Do you mean for to bury him alive?” inquired Spurey.

“Alive!  Gott in himmel—­no.  I knock de brains out first, perry afterwards.”

“There’s some sense in that, corporal.”

“And the dog can’t have much left anyhow, dog or devil, when his brains are all out.”

“No,” quoth Short.

“But who is to do it?”

“Corporal and I,” replied Smallbones; “we be agreed, ban’t we, corporal?”

“Mein Gott, yes!”

“And now I votes that we tries it off-hand; what’s the use of shilly-shally?  I made a mortal vow that that ’ere dog and I won’t live together—­there ban’t room enough for us two.”

“It’s a wide world, nevertheless,” observed Coble, hitching up his trousers; “howsomever, I have nothing to say, but I wish you luck; but if you kill that dog, I’m a bishop—­that’s all.”

“And if I don’t try for to do so, I am an harchbishop, that’s all,” replied the gallant Smallbones.  “Come along, corporal.”

And here was to be beheld a novel scene.  Smallbones followed in obedience by his former persecutor and his superior officer; a bag of bones—­a reed—­a lath—­a scarecrow; like a pilot cutter ahead of an Indiaman, followed in his wake by Corporal Van Spitter, weighing twenty stone.  How could this be?  It was human nature.  Smallbones took the lead, because he was the more courageous of the two, and the corporal following, proved he tacitly admitted it.