But this did not upset Eliphalet at all; he remembered the whole case clearly, and he told her she was not a married ghost, but a widow, since her husband had been hung for murdering her.  Then the Duncan ghost drew attention to the great disparity of their ages, saying that he was nearly four hundred and fifty years old, while she was barely two hundred.  But Eliphalet had not talked to juries for nothing; he just buckled to, and coaxed those ghosts into matrimony.  Afterward he came to the conclusion that they were willing to be coaxed, but at the time he thought he had pretty hard work to convince them of the advantages of the plan.”

“Did he succeed?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a young lady’s interest in matrimony.

“He did,” said Uncle Larry.  “He talked the wraith of the Duncans and the specter of the little old house at Salem into a matrimonial engagement.  And from the time they were engaged he had no more trouble with them.  They were rival ghosts no longer.  They were married by their spiritual chaplain the very same day that Eliphalet Duncan met Kitty Sutton in front of the railing of Grace Church.  The ghostly bride and bridegroom went away at once on their bridal tour, and Lord and Lady Duncan went down to the little old house at Salem to pass their honeymoon.”

Uncle Larry stopped.  His tiny cigar was out again.  The tale of the rival ghosts was told.  A solemn silence fell on the little party on the deck of the ocean steamer, broken harshly by the hoarse roar of the fog-horn.

THE DAMNED THING

BY AMBROSE BIERCE

I

ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS EAT WHAT IS ON THE TABLE

By the light of a tallow candle which had been placed on one end of a rough table a man was reading something written in a book.  It was an old account book, greatly worn; and the writing was not, apparently, very legible, for the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light on it.  The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures; for besides the reader, eight other men were present.  Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent, motionless, and the room being small, not very far from the table.  By extending an arm any one of them could have touched the eighth man, who lay on the table, face upward, partly covered by a sheet, his arms at his sides.  He was dead.

The man with the book was not reading aloud, and no one spoke; all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only was without expectation.  From the blank darkness outside came in, through the aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—­the long nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees; strange cries