He felt sure that it was Birt who had thus taken revenge, because he was kept at work while his fellow-laborer was free to go.

Byers thought the boy would presently come to take the garments home, and conceal his share in the matter, before any one else would be likely to stir abroad.

“An’ I’ll hide close by with a good big hickory stick, an’ I’ll gin him a larrupin’ ez he won’t furgit in a month o’ Sundays,” he resolved, angrily.

He opened his clasp-knife, and walked slowly into the woods, looking about for a choice hickory sprout.  He did not at once find one of a size that he considered appropriate to the magnitude of Birt’s wickedness, and he went further perhaps than he realized, and stayed longer.

He had a smile of stern satisfaction on his face when he was lopping off the leaves and twigs of a specimen admirably adapted for vengeance.  He was stealthy in returning, keeping behind the trees, and slipping softly from bole to bole.  At last, as the winding road was once more in view, he crouched down behind the roots of the great fallen oak.

“I don’t want him ter git a glimge of me, an’ skeer him off afore I kin lay a-holt on him,” he said.

He intended to keep the neighboring bush under close watch, and through the interlacing roots he peered out furtively at it.  His eyes distended and he hastily rose from his hiding-place.

The blackberry bush was swaying in the wind, clothed only in its own scant and rusty leaves.  A wren perched on a spray, chirped cheerful matins.

CHAPTER VI.

His scheme was thwarted.  The boy had come and gone in his absence, all unaware of his proximity and the impending punishment so narrowly escaped.

But when Andy Byers reached the tanyard and went to work, he said nothing to Birt.  He did not even allude to the counterfeit apparition in the woods, although Mrs. Price’s probable recovery was more than once under discussion among the men who came and went,—­ indeed, she lived many years thereafter, to defend her lucky grandchildren against every device of discipline.  Byers had given heed to more crafty counsels.  On the whole he was now glad that he had not had the opportunity to make Birt and the hickory sprout acquainted with each other.  This would be an acknowledgment that he had been terrified by the manufactured ghost, and he preferred foregoing open revenge to encountering the jocose tanner’s ridicule, and the gibes that would circulate at his expense throughout the country-side.  But he cherished the grievance, and he resolved that Birt should rue it.  He had expected that Birt would boast of having frightened him.  He intended to admit that he had been a trifle startled, and in treating the matter thus lightly he hoped it would seem that the apparition was a failure.