* Ghosts.

“Dell-law!” she exclaimed scornfully.  “I say harnt!  Old Mrs. Price, though spry ter the las’, war so proud o’ her age an’ her ailments that she wouldn’t hev nobody see her walk a step, or stand on her feet, fur nuthin’.  Her darter-in-law tole me ez the only way ter find out how nimble she really be war ter box one o’ her gran’chill’n, an’ then she’d bounce out’n her cheer, an’ jounce round the room after thar daddy or mammy, whichever hed boxed the chill’n.  That fursaken couple always hed ter drag thar chill’n out in the woods, out’n earshot of the house, ter whip ’em, an’ then threat ’em ef they dare let thar granny know they hed been struck.  But elsewise she hed ter be lifted from her bed ter her cheer by the h’a’th.  She wouldn’t hev her sperit seen a-walkin’ way up hyar a-top o’ the mounting, like enny healthy harnt, fur nuthin’ in this worl’.  Whatever ’twar, ‘twarn’t her.  An’ I reckon of the truth war knowed, ‘twarn’t nuthin’ at all—­forg, mebbe.”

This stalwart reasoning served to steady his nerves a little.  And when the moon went down and the day was slowly breaking, he took his way, with a vacillating intention and many a chilling doubt, along the winding road to the scene of his fright.

It was not yet time by a good hour or more to go to work, and nothing was stirring.  A wan light was on the landscape when he came in sight of the great tree prone upon the ground.  And there, close to the edge of the road, as if she had stepped aside to let him pass, was the figure of a little, bent old woman—­nay, in the brightening dawn, a bush—­a blackberry bush, clad in a blue-checked apron, a red plaid shawl, and with a neat sunbonnet nodding on its topmost spray.

His first emotion was intense relief.  Then he stood staring at the bush in rising indignation.  This sandy by-way of a road led only to his own house, and this image of a small and bent old woman had doubtless been devised, to terrify him, by some one who knew of his mission, and that he could not return except by this route.

Only for a moment did he feel uncertain as to the ghost-maker’s identity.  There was something singularly familiar to him in the plaid of the shawl—­even in the appearance of the bonnet, although it was now limp and damp.  He saw it at “meet’n” whenever the circuit rider preached, and he presently recognized it.  This was Mrs. Dicey’s bonnet!

His face hardened.  He set his teeth together.  An angry flush flared to the roots of his hair.

Not that he suspected the widow of having set this trap to frighten him.  He was not learned, nor versed in feminine idiosyncrasies, but it does not require much wisdom to know that on no account whatever does a woman’s best bonnet stay out all night in the dew, intentionally.  The presence of her bonnet proved the widow’s alibi.

Like a flash he remembered Birt’s anger the previous day.  “Told me he’d make me divide work mo’ ekal, an’ ez good ez said he’d knock me down ef he could.  An’ I told him I’d hold the grudge agin him jes’ the same—­an’ I will!”