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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Present at a Hanging et al.
+by Ambrose Bierce
+(#8 in our series by Ambrose Bierce)
+
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+Title: Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Release Date: August, 2003  [Etext #4387]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 20, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Present at a Hanging et. al.
+by Ambrose Bierce
+******This file should be named prhg10.txt or prhg10.zip******
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+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
+1918 Boni and Liveright "Can Such Things Be?" edition.
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+
+
+
+PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+The Ways of Ghosts
+   Present at a Hanging
+   A Cold Greeting
+   A Wireless Message
+   An Arrest
+Soldier-Folk
+   A Man with Two Lives
+   Three and One are One
+   A Baffled Ambuscade
+   Two Military Executions
+Some Haunted Houses
+   The Isle of Pines
+   A Fruitless Assignment
+   A Vine on a House
+   At Old Man Eckert's
+   The Spook House
+   The Other Lodgers
+   The Thing at Nolan
+   The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
+   An Unfinished Race
+   Charles Ashmore's Trail
+   Science to the Front
+
+
+
+THE WAYS OF GHOSTS
+
+
+
+
+My peculiar relation to the writer of the following narratives is
+such that I must ask the reader to overlook the absence of
+explanation as to how they came into my possession.  Withal, my
+knowledge of him is so meager that I should rather not undertake to
+say if he were himself persuaded of the truth of what he relates;
+certainly such inquiries as I have thought it worth while to set
+about have not in every instance tended to confirmation of the
+statements made.  Yet his style, for the most part devoid alike of
+artifice and art, almost baldly simple and direct, seems hardly
+compatible with the disingenuousness of a merely literary intention;
+one would call it the manner of one more concerned for the fruits of
+research than for the flowers of expression.  In transcribing his
+notes and fortifying their claim to attention by giving them
+something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously
+refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of
+diction as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not
+only have been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given
+me a somewhat closer relation to the work than I should care to have
+and to avow.--A. B.
+
+
+
+PRESENT AT A HANGING
+
+
+
+An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was
+suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had
+obtained permission to pass the night at his house.  This was in
+1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it
+is now, and was attended with considerable danger.  The peddler with
+his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and
+was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality.  This
+brought him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were
+not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living,
+murder being an acceptable means to that end.  It occasionally
+occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would
+be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and never
+could be traced beyond.  This was so in the case of "old man Baker,"
+as he was always called.  (Such names are given in the western
+"settlements" only to elderly persons who are not esteemed; to the
+general disrepute of social unworth is affixed the special reproach
+of age.)  A peddler came to his house and none went away--that is
+all that anybody knew.
+
+Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well
+known in that part of the country, was driving by Baker's farm one
+night.  It was not very dark:  there was a bit of moon somewhere
+above the light veil of mist that lay along the earth.  Mr.
+Cummings, who was at all times a cheerful person, was whistling a
+tune, which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word of
+friendly encouragement to his horse.  As he came to a little bridge
+across a dry ravine he saw the figure of a man standing upon it,
+clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty forest.  The
+man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy stick--
+obviously an itinerant peddler.  His attitude had in it a suggestion
+of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker.  Mr. Cummings reined in
+his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave him a pleasant
+salutation and invited him to a seat in the vehicle--"if you are
+going my way," he added.  The man raised his head, looked him full
+in the face, but neither answered nor made any further movement.
+The minister, with good-natured persistence, repeated his
+invitation.  At this the man threw his right hand forward from his
+side and pointed downward as he stood on the extreme edge of the
+bridge.  Mr. Cummings looked past him, over into the ravine, saw
+nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man again.  He
+had disappeared.  The horse, which all this time had been uncommonly
+restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror and started to
+run away.  Before he had regained control of the animal the minister
+was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along.  He looked back
+and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the same attitude
+as when he had first observed it.  Then for the first time he was
+conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly
+as his willing horse would go.
+
+On arriving at home he related his adventure to his family, and
+early the next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White
+Corwell and Abner Raiser, returned to the spot.  They found the body
+of old man Baker hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the
+bridge, immediately beneath the spot where the apparition had stood.
+A thick coating of dust, slightly dampened by the mist, covered the
+floor of the bridge, but the only footprints were those of Mr.
+Cummings' horse.
+
+In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose, friable earth
+of the slope below it, disclosing human bones already nearly
+uncovered by the action of water and frost.  They were identified as
+those of the lost peddler.  At the double inquest the coroner's jury
+found that Daniel Baker died by his own hand while suffering from
+temporary insanity, and that Samuel Morritz was murdered by some
+person or persons to the jury unknown.
+
+
+
+A COLD GREETING
+
+
+
+This is a story told by the late Benson Foley of San Francisco:
+
+"In the summer of 1881 I met a man named James H. Conway, a resident
+of Franklin, Tennessee.  He was visiting San Francisco for his
+health, deluded man, and brought me a note of introduction from Mr.
+Lawrence Barting.  I had known Barting as a captain in the Federal
+army during the civil war.  At its close he had settled in Franklin,
+and in time became, I had reason to think, somewhat prominent as a
+lawyer.  Barting had always seemed to me an honorable and truthful
+man, and the warm friendship which he expressed in his note for Mr.
+Conway was to me sufficient evidence that the latter was in every
+way worthy of my confidence and esteem.  At dinner one day Conway
+told me that it had been solemnly agreed between him and Barting
+that the one who died first should, if possible, communicate with
+the other from beyond the grave, in some unmistakable way--just how,
+they had left (wisely, it seemed to me) to be decided by the
+deceased, according to the opportunities that his altered
+circumstances might present.
+
+"A few weeks after the conversation in which Mr. Conway spoke of
+this agreement, I met him one day, walking slowly down Montgomery
+street, apparently, from his abstracted air, in deep thought.  He
+greeted me coldly with merely a movement of the head and passed on,
+leaving me standing on the walk, with half-proffered hand, surprised
+and naturally somewhat piqued.  The next day I met him again in the
+office of the Palace Hotel, and seeing him about to repeat the
+disagreeable performance of the day before, intercepted him in a
+doorway, with a friendly salutation, and bluntly requested an
+explanation of his altered manner.  He hesitated a moment; then,
+looking me frankly in the eyes, said:
+
+"'I do not think, Mr. Foley, that I have any longer a claim to your
+friendship, since Mr. Barting appears to have withdrawn his own from
+me--for what reason, I protest I do not know.  If he has not already
+informed you he probably will do so.'
+
+"'But,' I replied, 'I have not heard from Mr. Barting.'
+
+"'Heard from him!' he repeated, with apparent surprise.  'Why, he is
+here.  I met him yesterday ten minutes before meeting you.  I gave
+you exactly the same greeting that he gave me.  I met him again not
+a quarter of an hour ago, and his manner was precisely the same:  he
+merely bowed and passed on.  I shall not soon forget your civility
+to me.  Good morning, or--as it may please you--farewell.'
+
+"All this seemed to me singularly considerate and delicate behavior
+on the part of Mr. Conway.
+
+"As dramatic situations and literary effects are foreign to my
+purpose I will explain at once that Mr. Barting was dead.  He had
+died in Nashville four days before this conversation.  Calling on
+Mr. Conway, I apprised him of our friend's death, showing him the
+letters announcing it.  He was visibly affected in a way that
+forbade me to entertain a doubt of his sincerity.
+
+"'It seems incredible,' he said, after a period of reflection.  'I
+suppose I must have mistaken another man for Barting, and that man's
+cold greeting was merely a stranger's civil acknowledgment of my
+own.  I remember, indeed, that he lacked Barting's mustache.'
+
+"'Doubtless it was another man,' I assented; and the subject was
+never afterward mentioned between us.  But I had in my pocket a
+photograph of Barting, which had been inclosed in the letter from
+his widow.  It had been taken a week before his death, and was
+without a mustache."
+
+
+
+A WIRELESS MESSAGE
+
+
+
+In the summer of 1896 Mr. William Holt, a wealthy manufacturer of
+Chicago, was living temporarily in a little town of central New
+York, the name of which the writer's memory has not retained.  Mr.
+Holt had had "trouble with his wife," from whom he had parted a year
+before.  Whether the trouble was anything more serious than
+"incompatibility of temper," he is probably the only living person
+that knows:  he is not addicted to the vice of confidences.  Yet he
+has related the incident herein set down to at least one person
+without exacting a pledge of secrecy.  He is now living in Europe.
+
+One evening he had left the house of a brother whom he was visiting,
+for a stroll in the country.  It may be assumed--whatever the value
+of the assumption in connection with what is said to have occurred--
+that his mind was occupied with reflections on his domestic
+infelicities and the distressing changes that they had wrought in
+his life.
+
+Whatever may have been his thoughts, they so possessed him that he
+observed neither the lapse of time nor whither his feet were
+carrying him; he knew only that he had passed far beyond the town
+limits and was traversing a lonely region by a road that bore no
+resemblance to the one by which he had left the village.  In brief,
+he was "lost."
+
+Realizing his mischance, he smiled; central New York is not a region
+of perils, nor does one long remain lost in it.  He turned about and
+went back the way that he had come.  Before he had gone far he
+observed that the landscape was growing more distinct--was
+brightening.  Everything was suffused with a soft, red glow in which
+he saw his shadow projected in the road before him.  "The moon is
+rising," he said to himself.  Then he remembered that it was about
+the time of the new moon, and if that tricksy orb was in one of its
+stages of visibility it had set long before.  He stopped and faced
+about, seeking the source of the rapidly broadening light.  As he
+did so, his shadow turned and lay along the road in front of him as
+before.  The light still came from behind him.  That was surprising;
+he could not understand.  Again he turned, and again, facing
+successively to every point of the horizon.  Always the shadow was
+before--always the light behind, "a still and awful red."
+
+Holt was astonished--"dumfounded" is the word that he used in
+telling it--yet seems to have retained a certain intelligent
+curiosity.  To test the intensity of the light whose nature and
+cause he could not determine, he took out his watch to see if he
+could make out the figures on the dial.  They were plainly visible,
+and the hands indicated the hour of eleven o'clock and twenty-five
+minutes.  At that moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared
+to an intense, an almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky,
+extinguishing the stars and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself
+athwart the landscape.  In that unearthly illumination he saw near
+him, but apparently in the air at a considerable elevation, the
+figure of his wife, clad in her night-clothing and holding to her
+breast the figure of his child.  Her eyes were fixed upon his with
+an expression which he afterward professed himself unable to name or
+describe, further than that it was "not of this life."
+
+The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness, in which,
+however, the apparition still showed white and motionless; then by
+insensible degrees it faded and vanished, like a bright image on the
+retina after the closing of the eyes.  A peculiarity of the
+apparition, hardly noted at the time, but afterward recalled, was
+that it showed only the upper half of the woman's figure:  nothing
+was seen below the waist.
+
+The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute, for gradually all
+objects of his environment became again visible.
+
+In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering the village
+at a point opposite to that at which he had left it.  He soon
+arrived at the house of his brother, who hardly knew him.  He was
+wild-eyed, haggard, and gray as a rat.  Almost incoherently, he
+related his night's experience.
+
+"Go to bed, my poor fellow," said his brother, "and--wait.  We shall
+hear more of this."
+
+An hour later came the predestined telegram.  Holt's dwelling in one
+of the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire.  Her escape
+cut off by the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window, her
+child in her arms.  There she had stood, motionless, apparently
+dazed.  Just as the firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor had
+given way, and she was seen no more.
+
+The moment of this culminating horror was eleven o'clock and twenty-
+five minutes, standard time.
+
+
+
+AN ARREST
+
+
+
+Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a
+fugitive from justice.  From the county jail where he had been
+confined to await his trial he had escaped by knocking down his
+jailer with an iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the
+outer door, walking out into the night.  The jailer being unarmed,
+Brower got no weapon with which to defend his recovered liberty.  As
+soon as he was out of the town he had the folly to enter a forest;
+this was many years ago, when that region was wilder than it is now.
+
+The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and
+as Brower had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of
+the land, he was, naturally, not long in losing himself.  He could
+not have said if he were getting farther away from the town or going
+back to it--a most important matter to Orrin Brower.  He knew that
+in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would
+soon be on his track and his chance of escape was very slender; but
+he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit.  Even an added hour of
+freedom was worth having.
+
+Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there
+before him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the
+gloom.  It was too late to retreat:  the fugitive felt that at the
+first movement back toward the wood he would be, as he afterward
+explained, "filled with buckshot."  So the two stood there like
+trees, Brower nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart;
+the other--the emotions of the other are not recorded.
+
+A moment later--it may have been an hour--the moon sailed into a
+patch of unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible
+embodiment of Law lift an arm and point significantly toward and
+beyond him.  He understood.  Turning his back to his captor, he
+walked submissively away in the direction indicated, looking to
+neither the right nor the left; hardly daring to breathe, his head
+and back actually aching with a prophecy of buckshot.
+
+Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged; that
+was shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had
+coolly killed his brother-in-law.  It is needless to relate them
+here; they came out at his trial, and the revelation of his calmness
+in confronting them came near to saving his neck.  But what would
+you have?--when a brave man is beaten, he submits.
+
+So they pursued their journey jailward along the old road through
+the woods.  Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head:  just
+once, when he was in deep shadow and he knew that the other was in
+moonlight, he looked backward.  His captor was Burton Duff, the
+jailer, as white as death and bearing upon his brow the livid mark
+of the iron bar.  Orrin Brower had no further curiosity.
+
+Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but
+deserted; only the women and children remained, and they were off
+the streets.  Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way.
+Straight up to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the
+knob of the heavy iron door, pushed it open without command, entered
+and found himself in the presence of a half-dozen armed men.  Then
+he turned.  Nobody else entered.
+
+On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff.
+
+
+
+
+SOLDIER-FOLK
+
+
+
+
+A MAN WITH TWO LIVES
+
+
+
+Here is the queer story of David William Duck, related by himself.
+Duck is an old man living in Aurora, Illinois, where he is
+universally respected.  He is commonly known, however, as "Dead
+Duck."
+
+"In the autumn of 1866 I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth
+Infantry.  My company was one of those stationed at Fort Phil
+Kearney, commanded by Colonel Carrington.  The country is more or
+less familiar with the history of that garrison, particularly with
+the slaughter by the Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and
+officers--not one escaping--through disobedience of orders by its
+commander, the brave but reckless Captain Fetterman.  When that
+occurred, I was trying to make my way with important dispatches to
+Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn.  As the country swarmed with
+hostile Indians, I traveled by night and concealed myself as best I
+could before daybreak.  The better to do so, I went afoot, armed
+with a Henry rifle and carrying three days' rations in my haversack.
+
+"For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the
+darkness a narrow canon leading through a range of rocky hills.  It
+contained many large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the
+hills.  Behind one of these, in a clump of sage-brush, I made my bed
+for the day, and soon fell asleep.  It seemed as if I had hardly
+closed my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was
+awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet striking the bowlder
+just above my body.  A band of Indians had trailed me and had me
+nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an execrable aim by
+a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside above.  The
+smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my feet than
+he was off his and rolling down the declivity.  Then I ran in a
+stooping posture, dodging among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm
+of bullets from invisible enemies.  The rascals did not rise and
+pursue, which I thought rather queer, for they must have known by my
+trail that they had to deal with only one man.  The reason for their
+inaction was soon made clear.  I had not gone a hundred yards before
+I reached the limit of my run--the head of the gulch which I had
+mistaken for a canon.  It terminated in a concave breast of rock,
+nearly vertical and destitute of vegetation.  In that cul-de-sac I
+was caught like a bear in a pen.  Pursuit was needless; they had
+only to wait.
+
+"They waited.  For two days and nights, crouching behind a rock
+topped with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back,
+suffering agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance,
+I fought the fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke
+of their rifles, as they did at that of mine.  Of course, I did not
+dare to close my eyes at night, and lack of sleep was a keen
+torture.
+
+"I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew was to be my
+last.  I remember, rather indistinctly, that in my desperation and
+delirium I sprang out into the open and began firing my repeating
+rifle without seeing anybody to fire at.  And I remember no more of
+that fight.
+
+"The next thing that I recollect was my pulling myself out of a
+river just at nightfall.  I had not a rag of clothing and knew
+nothing of my whereabouts, but all that night I traveled, cold and
+footsore, toward the north.  At daybreak I found myself at Fort C.
+F. Smith, my destination, but without my dispatches.  The first man
+that I met was a sergeant named William Briscoe, whom I knew very
+well.  You can fancy his astonishment at seeing me in that
+condition, and my own at his asking who the devil I was.
+
+"'Dave Duck,' I answered; 'who should I be?'
+
+"He stared like an owl.
+
+"'You do look it,' he said, and I observed that he drew a little
+away from me.  'What's up?' he added.
+
+"I told him what had happened to me the day before.  He heard me
+through, still staring; then he said:
+
+"'My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck I ought to inform you that I
+buried you two months ago.  I was out with a small scouting party
+and found your body, full of bullet-holes and newly scalped--
+somewhat mutilated otherwise, too, I am sorry to say--right where
+you say you made your fight.  Come to my tent and I'll show you your
+clothing and some letters that I took from your person; the
+commandant has your dispatches.'
+
+"He performed that promise.  He showed me the clothing, which I
+resolutely put on; the letters, which I put into my pocket.  He made
+no objection, then took me to the commandant, who heard my story and
+coldly ordered Briscoe to take me to the guardhouse.  On the way I
+said:
+
+"'Bill Briscoe, did you really and truly bury the dead body that you
+found in these togs?'
+
+"'Sure,' he answered--'just as I told you.  It was Dave Duck, all
+right; most of us knew him.  And now, you damned impostor, you'd
+better tell me who you are.'
+
+"'I'd give something to know,' I said.
+
+"A week later, I escaped from the guardhouse and got out of the
+country as fast as I could.  Twice I have been back, seeking for
+that fateful spot in the hills, but unable to find it."
+
+
+
+THREE AND ONE ARE ONE
+
+
+
+In the year 1861 Barr Lassiter, a young man of twenty-two, lived
+with his parents and an elder sister near Carthage, Tennessee.  The
+family were in somewhat humble circumstances, subsisting by
+cultivation of a small and not very fertile plantation.  Owning no
+slaves, they were not rated among "the best people" of their
+neighborhood; but they were honest persons of good education, fairly
+well mannered and as respectable as any family could be if
+uncredentialed by personal dominion over the sons and daughters of
+Ham.  The elder Lassiter had that severity of manner that so
+frequently affirms an uncompromising devotion to duty, and conceals
+a warm and affectionate disposition.  He was of the iron of which
+martyrs are made, but in the heart of the matrix had lurked a nobler
+metal, fusible at a milder heat, yet never coloring nor softening
+the hard exterior.  By both heredity and environment something of
+the man's inflexible character had touched the other members of the
+family; the Lassiter home, though not devoid of domestic affection,
+was a veritable citadel of duty, and duty--ah, duty is as cruel as
+death!
+
+When the war came on it found in the family, as in so many others in
+that State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the
+Union, the others savagely hostile.  This unhappy division begot an
+insupportable domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and
+brother left home with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal
+army not a hand was laid in his, not a word of farewell was spoken,
+not a good wish followed him out into the world whither he went to
+meet with such spirit as he might whatever fate awaited him.
+
+Making his way to Nashville, already occupied by the Army of General
+Buell, he enlisted in the first organization that he found, a
+Kentucky regiment of cavalry, and in due time passed through all the
+stages of military evolution from raw recruit to experienced
+trooper.  A right good trooper he was, too, although in his oral
+narrative from which this tale is made there was no mention of that;
+the fact was learned from his surviving comrades.  For Barr Lassiter
+has answered "Here" to the sergeant whose name is Death.
+
+Two years after he had joined it his regiment passed through the
+region whence he had come.  The country thereabout had suffered
+severely from the ravages of war, having been occupied alternately
+(and simultaneously) by the belligerent forces, and a sanguinary
+struggle had occurred in the immediate vicinity of the Lassiter
+homestead.  But of this the young trooper was not aware.
+
+Finding himself in camp near his home, he felt a natural longing to
+see his parents and sister, hoping that in them, as in him, the
+unnatural animosities of the period had been softened by time and
+separation.  Obtaining a leave of absence, he set foot in the late
+summer afternoon, and soon after the rising of the full moon was
+walking up the gravel path leading to the dwelling in which he had
+been born.
+
+Soldiers in war age rapidly, and in youth two years are a long time.
+Barr Lassiter felt himself an old man, and had almost expected to
+find the place a ruin and a desolation.  Nothing, apparently, was
+changed.  At the sight of each dear and familiar object he was
+profoundly affected.  His heart beat audibly, his emotion nearly
+suffocated him; an ache was in his throat.  Unconsciously he
+quickened his pace until he almost ran, his long shadow making
+grotesque efforts to keep its place beside him.
+
+The house was unlighted, the door open.  As he approached and paused
+to recover control of himself his father came out and stood bare-
+headed in the moonlight.
+
+"Father!" cried the young man, springing forward with outstretched
+hand--"Father!"
+
+The elder man looked him sternly in the face, stood a moment
+motionless and without a word withdrew into the house.  Bitterly
+disappointed, humiliated, inexpressibly hurt and altogether
+unnerved, the soldier dropped upon a rustic seat in deep dejection,
+supporting his head upon his trembling hand.  But he would not have
+it so:  he was too good a soldier to accept repulse as defeat.  He
+rose and entered the house, passing directly to the "sitting-room."
+
+It was dimly lighted by an uncurtained east window.  On a low stool
+by the hearthside, the only article of furniture in the place, sat
+his mother, staring into a fireplace strewn with blackened embers
+and cold ashes.  He spoke to her--tenderly, interrogatively, and
+with hesitation, but she neither answered, nor moved, nor seemed in
+any way surprised.  True, there had been time for her husband to
+apprise her of their guilty son's return.  He moved nearer and was
+about to lay his hand upon her arm, when his sister entered from an
+adjoining room, looked him full in the face, passed him without a
+sign of recognition and left the room by a door that was partly
+behind him.  He had turned his head to watch her, but when she was
+gone his eyes again sought his mother.  She too had left the place.
+
+Barr Lassiter strode to the door by which he had entered.  The
+moonlight on the lawn was tremulous, as if the sward were a rippling
+sea.  The trees and their black shadows shook as in a breeze.
+Blended with its borders, the gravel walk seemed unsteady and
+insecure to step on.  This young soldier knew the optical illusions
+produced by tears.  He felt them on his cheek, and saw them sparkle
+on the breast of his trooper's jacket.  He left the house and made
+his way back to camp.
+
+The next day, with no very definite intention, with no dominant
+feeling that he could rightly have named, he again sought the spot.
+Within a half-mile of it he met Bushrod Albro, a former playfellow
+and schoolmate, who greeted him warmly.
+
+"I am going to visit my home," said the soldier.
+
+The other looked at him rather sharply, but said nothing.
+
+"I know," continued Lassiter, "that my folks have not changed, but--
+"
+
+"There have been changes," Albro interrupted--"everything changes.
+I'll go with you if you don't mind.  We can talk as we go."
+
+But Albro did not talk.
+
+Instead of a house they found only fire-blackened foundations of
+stone, enclosing an area of compact ashes pitted by rains.
+
+Lassiter's astonishment was extreme.
+
+"I could not find the right way to tell you," said Albro.  "In the
+fight a year ago your house was burned by a Federal shell."
+
+"And my family--where are they?"
+
+"In Heaven, I hope.  All were killed by the shell."
+
+
+
+A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE
+
+
+
+Connecting Readyville and Woodbury was a good, hard turnpike nine or
+ten miles long.  Readyville was an outpost of the Federal army at
+Murfreesboro; Woodbury had the same relation to the Confederate army
+at Tullahoma.  For months after the big battle at Stone River these
+outposts were in constant quarrel, most of the trouble occurring,
+naturally, on the turnpike mentioned, between detachments of
+cavalry.  Sometimes the infantry and artillery took a hand in the
+game by way of showing their good-will.
+
+One night a squadron of Federal horse commanded by Major Seidel, a
+gallant and skillful officer, moved out from Readyville on an
+uncommonly hazardous enterprise requiring secrecy, caution and
+silence.
+
+Passing the infantry pickets, the detachment soon afterward
+approached two cavalry videttes staring hard into the darkness
+ahead.  There should have been three.
+
+"Where is your other man?" said the major.  "I ordered Dunning to be
+here to-night."
+
+"He rode forward, sir," the man replied.  "There was a little firing
+afterward, but it was a long way to the front."
+
+"It was against orders and against sense for Dunning to do that,"
+said the officer, obviously vexed.  "Why did he ride forward?"
+
+"Don't know, sir; he seemed mighty restless.  Guess he was skeered."
+
+When this remarkable reasoner and his companion had been absorbed
+into the expeditionary force, it resumed its advance.  Conversation
+was forbidden; arms and accouterments were denied the right to
+rattle.  The horses' tramping was all that could be heard and the
+movement was slow in order to have as little as possible of that.
+It was after midnight and pretty dark, although there was a bit of
+moon somewhere behind the masses of cloud.
+
+Two or three miles along, the head of the column approached a dense
+forest of cedars bordering the road on both sides.  The major
+commanded a halt by merely halting, and, evidently himself a bit
+"skeered," rode on alone to reconnoiter.  He was followed, however,
+by his adjutant and three troopers, who remained a little distance
+behind and, unseen by him, saw all that occurred.
+
+After riding about a hundred yards toward the forest, the major
+suddenly and sharply reined in his horse and sat motionless in the
+saddle.  Near the side of the road, in a little open space and
+hardly ten paces away, stood the figure of a man, dimly visible and
+as motionless as he.  The major's first feeling was that of
+satisfaction in having left his cavalcade behind; if this were an
+enemy and should escape he would have little to report.  The
+expedition was as yet undetected.
+
+Some dark object was dimly discernible at the man's feet; the
+officer could not make it out.  With the instinct of the true
+cavalryman and a particular indisposition to the discharge of
+firearms, he drew his saber.  The man on foot made no movement in
+answer to the challenge.  The situation was tense and a bit
+dramatic.  Suddenly the moon burst through a rift in the clouds and,
+himself in the shadow of a group of great oaks, the horseman saw the
+footman clearly, in a patch of white light.  It was Trooper Dunning,
+unarmed and bareheaded.  The object at his feet resolved itself into
+a dead horse, and at a right angle across the animal's neck lay a
+dead man, face upward in the moonlight.
+
+"Dunning has had the fight of his life," thought the major, and was
+about to ride forward.  Dunning raised his hand, motioning him back
+with a gesture of warning; then, lowering the arm, he pointed to the
+place where the road lost itself in the blackness of the cedar
+forest.
+
+The major understood, and turning his horse rode back to the little
+group that had followed him and was already moving to the rear in
+fear of his displeasure, and so returned to the head of his command.
+
+"Dunning is just ahead there," he said to the captain of his leading
+company.  "He has killed his man and will have something to report."
+
+Right patiently they waited, sabers drawn, but Dunning did not come.
+In an hour the day broke and the whole force moved cautiously
+forward, its commander not altogether satisfied with his faith in
+Private Dunning.  The expedition had failed, but something remained
+to be done.
+
+In the little open space off the road they found the fallen horse.
+At a right angle across the animal's neck face upward, a bullet in
+the brain, lay the body of Trooper Dunning, stiff as a statue, hours
+dead.
+
+Examination disclosed abundant evidence that within a half-hour the
+cedar forest had been occupied by a strong force of Confederate
+infantry--an ambuscade.
+
+
+
+TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS
+
+
+
+In the spring of the year 1862 General Buell's big army lay in camp,
+licking itself into shape for the campaign which resulted in the
+victory at Shiloh.  It was a raw, untrained army, although some of
+its fractions had seen hard enough service, with a good deal of
+fighting, in the mountains of Western Virginia, and in Kentucky.
+The war was young and soldiering a new industry, imperfectly
+understood by the young American of the period, who found some
+features of it not altogether to his liking.  Chief among these was
+that essential part of discipline, subordination.  To one imbued
+from infancy with the fascinating fallacy that all men are born
+equal, unquestioning submission to authority is not easily mastered,
+and the American volunteer soldier in his "green and salad days" is
+among the worst known.  That is how it happened that one of Buell's
+men, Private Bennett Story Greene, committed the indiscretion of
+striking his officer.  Later in the war he would not have done that;
+like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would have "seen him damned" first.
+But time for reformation of his military manners was denied him:  he
+was promptly arrested on complaint of the officer, tried by court-
+martial and sentenced to be shot.
+
+"You might have thrashed me and let it go at that," said the
+condemned man to the complaining witness; "that is what you used to
+do at school, when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good as
+you.  Nobody saw me strike you; discipline would not have suffered
+much."
+
+"Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that," said the lieutenant.
+"Will you forgive me?  That is what I came to see you about."
+
+There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door
+of the guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained
+that the time allowed for the interview had expired.  The next
+morning, when in the presence of the whole brigade Private Greene
+was shot to death by a squad of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley
+turned his back upon the sorry performance and muttered a prayer for
+mercy, in which himself was included.
+
+A few weeks afterward, as Buell's leading division was being ferried
+over the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant's beaten army,
+night was coming on, black and stormy.  Through the wreck of battle
+the division moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the enemy, who
+had withdrawn a little to reform his lines.  But for the lightning
+the darkness was absolute.  Never for a moment did it cease, and
+ever when the thunder did not crack and roar were heard the moans of
+the wounded among whom the men felt their way with their feet, and
+upon whom they stumbled in the gloom.  The dead were there, too--
+there were dead a-plenty.
+
+In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance
+had paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle,
+and skirmishers had been thrown forward, word was passed along to
+call the roll.  The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley's company
+stepped to the front and began to name the men in alphabetical
+order.  He had no written roll, but a good memory.  The men answered
+to their names as he ran down the alphabet to G.
+
+"Gorham."
+
+"Here!"
+
+"Grayrock."
+
+"Here!"
+
+The sergeant's good memory was affected by habit:
+
+"Greene."
+
+"Here!"
+
+The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable!
+
+A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from
+an electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident.
+The sergeant paled and paused.  The captain strode quickly to his
+side and said sharply:
+
+"Call that name again."
+
+Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the
+field of curiosity concerning the Unknown.
+
+"Bennett Greene."
+
+"Here!"
+
+All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
+between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in
+line turned and squarely confronted each other.
+
+"Once more," commanded the inexorable investigator, and once more
+came--a trifle tremulously--the name of the dead man:
+
+"Bennett Story Greene."
+
+"Here!"
+
+At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front,
+beyond the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage
+hiss of an approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck
+audibly, punctuating as with a full stop the captain's exclamation,
+"What the devil does it mean?"
+
+Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the
+rear.
+
+"It means this," he said, throwing open his coat and displaying a
+visibly broadening stain of crimson on his breast.  His knees gave
+way; he fell awkwardly and lay dead.
+
+A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the
+congested front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was
+not again under fire.  Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military
+executions, ever again signify his presence at one.
+
+
+
+
+SOME HAUNTED HOUSES
+
+
+
+
+THE ISLE OF PINES
+
+
+
+For many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old
+man named Herman Deluse.  Very little was known of his history, for
+he would neither speak of it himself nor suffer others.  It was a
+common belief among his neighbors that he had been a pirate--if upon
+any better evidence than his collection of boarding pikes,
+cutlasses, and ancient flintlock pistols, no one knew.  He lived
+entirely alone in a small house of four rooms, falling rapidly into
+decay and never repaired further than was required by the weather.
+It stood on a slight elevation in the midst of a large, stony field
+overgrown with brambles, and cultivated in patches and only in the
+most primitive way.  It was his only visible property, but could
+hardly have yielded him a living, simple and few as were his wants.
+He seemed always to have ready money, and paid cash for all his
+purchases at the village stores roundabout, seldom buying more than
+two or three times at the same place until after the lapse of a
+considerable time.  He got no commendation, however, for this
+equitable distribution of his patronage; people were disposed to
+regard it as an ineffectual attempt to conceal his possession of so
+much money.  That he had great hoards of ill-gotten gold buried
+somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling was not reasonably to be
+doubted by any honest soul conversant with the facts of local
+tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of things.
+
+On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead
+body was discovered on the 10th, and physicians testified that death
+had occurred about twenty-four hours previously--precisely how, they
+were unable to say; for the post-mortem examination showed every
+organ to be absolutely healthy, with no indication of disorder or
+violence.  According to them, death must have taken place about
+noonday, yet the body was found in bed.  The verdict of the
+coroner's jury was that he "came to his death by a visitation of
+God."  The body was buried and the public administrator took charge
+of the estate.
+
+A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known
+about the dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about
+the premises by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded.
+The administrator locked up the house against the time when the
+property, real and personal, should be sold by law with a view to
+defraying, partly, the expenses of the sale.
+
+The night of November 20 was boisterous.  A furious gale stormed
+across the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet.
+Great trees were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads.
+So wild a night had never been known in all that region, but toward
+morning the storm had blown itself out of breath and day dawned
+bright and clear.  At about eight o'clock that morning the Rev.
+Henry Galbraith, a well-known and highly esteemed Lutheran minister,
+arrived on foot at his house, a mile and a half from the Deluse
+place.  Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in Cincinnati.  He had
+come up the river in a steamboat, and landing at Gallipolis the
+previous evening had immediately obtained a horse and buggy and set
+out for home.  The violence of the storm had delayed him over night,
+and in the morning the fallen trees had compelled him to abandon his
+conveyance and continue his journey afoot.
+
+"But where did you pass the night?" inquired his wife, after he had
+briefly related his adventure.
+
+"With old Deluse at the 'Isle of Pines,'" {1} was the laughing
+reply; "and a glum enough time I had of it.  He made no objection to
+my remaining, but not a word could I get out of him."
+
+Fortunately for the interests of truth there was present at this
+conversation Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, a lawyer and litterateur of
+Columbus, the same who wrote the delightful "Mellowcraft Papers."
+Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr.
+Galbraith's answer this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the
+exclamations that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly
+inquired:  "How came you to go in there?"
+
+This is Mr. Maren's version of Mr. Galbraith's reply:
+
+"I saw a light moving about the house, and being nearly blinded by
+the sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put up
+my horse in the old rail stable, where it is now.  I then rapped at
+the door, and getting no invitation went in without one.  The room
+was dark, but having matches I found a candle and lit it.  I tried
+to enter the adjoining room, but the door was fast, and although I
+heard the old man's heavy footsteps in there he made no response to
+my calls.  There was no fire on the hearth, so I made one and laying
+[sic] down before it with my overcoat under my head, prepared myself
+for sleep.  Pretty soon the door that I had tried silently opened
+and the old man came in, carrying a candle.  I spoke to him
+pleasantly, apologizing for my intrusion, but he took no notice of
+me.  He seemed to be searching for something, though his eyes were
+unmoved in their sockets.  I wonder if he ever walks in his sleep.
+He took a circuit a part of the way round the room, and went out the
+same way he had come in.  Twice more before I slept he came back
+into the room, acting precisely the same way, and departing as at
+first.  In the intervals I heard him tramping all over the house,
+his footsteps distinctly audible in the pauses of the storm.  When I
+woke in the morning he had already gone out."
+
+Mr. Maren attempted some further questioning, but was unable longer
+to restrain the family's tongues; the story of Deluse's death and
+burial came out, greatly to the good minister's astonishment.
+
+"The explanation of your adventure is very simple," said Mr. Maren.
+"I don't believe old Deluse walks in his sleep--not in his present
+one; but you evidently dream in yours."
+
+And to this view of the matter Mr. Galbraith was compelled
+reluctantly to assent.
+
+Nevertheless, a late hour of the next night found these two
+gentlemen, accompanied by a son of the minister, in the road in
+front of the old Deluse house.  There was a light inside; it
+appeared now at one window and now at another.  The three men
+advanced to the door.  Just as they reached it there came from the
+interior a confusion of the most appalling sounds--the clash of
+weapons, steel against steel, sharp explosions as of firearms,
+shrieks of women, groans and the curses of men in combat!  The
+investigators stood a moment, irresolute, frightened.  Then Mr.
+Galbraith tried the door.  It was fast.  But the minister was a man
+of courage, a man, moreover, of Herculean strength.  He retired a
+pace or two and rushed against the door, striking it with his right
+shoulder and bursting it from the frame with a loud crash.  In a
+moment the three were inside.  Darkness and silence!  The only sound
+was the beating of their hearts.
+
+Mr. Maren had provided himself with matches and a candle.  With some
+difficulty, begotten of his excitement, he made a light, and they
+proceeded to explore the place, passing from room to room.
+Everything was in orderly arrangement, as it had been left by the
+sheriff; nothing had been disturbed.  A light coating of dust was
+everywhere.  A back door was partly open, as if by neglect, and
+their first thought was that the authors of the awful revelry might
+have escaped.  The door was opened, and the light of the candle
+shone through upon the ground.  The expiring effort of the previous
+night's storm had been a light fall of snow; there were no
+footprints; the white surface was unbroken.  They closed the door
+and entered the last room of the four that the house contained--that
+farthest from the road, in an angle of the building.  Here the
+candle in Mr. Maren's hand was suddenly extinguished as by a draught
+of air.  Almost immediately followed the sound of a heavy fall.
+When the candle had been hastily relighted young Mr. Galbraith was
+seen prostrate on the floor at a little distance from the others.
+He was dead.  In one hand the body grasped a heavy sack of coins,
+which later examination showed to be all of old Spanish mintage.
+Directly over the body as it lay, a board had been torn from its
+fastenings in the wall, and from the cavity so disclosed it was
+evident that the bag had been taken.
+
+Another inquest was held:  another post-mortem examination failed to
+reveal a probable cause of death.  Another verdict of "the
+visitation of God" left all at liberty to form their own
+conclusions.  Mr. Maren contended that the young man died of
+excitement.
+
+
+
+A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT
+
+
+
+Henry Saylor, who was killed in Covington, in a quarrel with Antonio
+Finch, was a reporter on the Cincinnati Commercial.  In the year
+1859 a vacant dwelling in Vine street, in Cincinnati, became the
+center of a local excitement because of the strange sights and
+sounds said to be observed in it nightly.  According to the
+testimony of many reputable residents of the vicinity these were
+inconsistent with any other hypothesis than that the house was
+haunted.  Figures with something singularly unfamiliar about them
+were seen by crowds on the sidewalk to pass in and out.  No one
+could say just where they appeared upon the open lawn on their way
+to the front door by which they entered, nor at exactly what point
+they vanished as they came out; or, rather, while each spectator was
+positive enough about these matters, no two agreed.  They were all
+similarly at variance in their descriptions of the figures
+themselves.  Some of the bolder of the curious throng ventured on
+several evenings to stand upon the doorsteps to intercept them, or
+failing in this, get a nearer look at them.  These courageous men,
+it was said, were unable to force the door by their united strength,
+and always were hurled from the steps by some invisible agency and
+severely injured; the door immediately afterward opening, apparently
+of its own volition, to admit or free some ghostly guest.  The
+dwelling was known as the Roscoe house, a family of that name having
+lived there for some years, and then, one by one, disappeared, the
+last to leave being an old woman.  Stories of foul play and
+successive murders had always been rife, but never were
+authenticated.
+
+One day during the prevalence of the excitement Saylor presented
+himself at the office of the Commercial for orders.  He received a
+note from the city editor which read as follows:  "Go and pass the
+night alone in the haunted house in Vine street and if anything
+occurs worth while make two columns."  Saylor obeyed his superior;
+he could not afford to lose his position on the paper.
+
+Apprising the police of his intention, he effected an entrance
+through a rear window before dark, walked through the deserted
+rooms, bare of furniture, dusty and desolate, and seating himself at
+last in the parlor on an old sofa which he had dragged in from
+another room watched the deepening of the gloom as night came on.
+Before it was altogether dark the curious crowd had collected in the
+street, silent, as a rule, and expectant, with here and there a
+scoffer uttering his incredulity and courage with scornful remarks
+or ribald cries.  None knew of the anxious watcher inside.  He
+feared to make a light; the uncurtained windows would have betrayed
+his presence, subjecting him to insult, possibly to injury.
+Moreover, he was too conscientious to do anything to enfeeble his
+impressions and unwilling to alter any of the customary conditions
+under which the manifestations were said to occur.
+
+It was now dark outside, but light from the street faintly
+illuminated the part of the room that he was in.  He had set open
+every door in the whole interior, above and below, but all the outer
+ones were locked and bolted.  Sudden exclamations from the crowd
+caused him to spring to the window and look out.  He saw the figure
+of a man moving rapidly across the lawn toward the building--saw it
+ascend the steps; then a projection of the wall concealed it.  There
+was a noise as of the opening and closing of the hall door; he heard
+quick, heavy footsteps along the passage--heard them ascend the
+stairs--heard them on the uncarpeted floor of the chamber
+immediately overhead.
+
+Saylor promptly drew his pistol, and groping his way up the stairs
+entered the chamber, dimly lighted from the street.  No one was
+there.  He heard footsteps in an adjoining room and entered that.
+It was dark and silent.  He struck his foot against some object on
+the floor, knelt by it, passed his hand over it.  It was a human
+head--that of a woman.  Lifting it by the hair this iron-nerved man
+returned to the half-lighted room below, carried it near the window
+and attentively examined it.  While so engaged he was half conscious
+of the rapid opening and closing of the outer door, of footfalls
+sounding all about him.  He raised his eyes from the ghastly object
+of his attention and saw himself the center of a crowd of men and
+women dimly seen; the room was thronged with them.  He thought the
+people had broken in.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, coolly, "you see me under
+suspicious circumstances, but"--his voice was drowned in peals of
+laughter--such laughter as is heard in asylums for the insane.  The
+persons about him pointed at the object in his hand and their
+merriment increased as he dropped it and it went rolling among their
+feet.  They danced about it with gestures grotesque and attitudes
+obscene and indescribable.  They struck it with their feet, urging
+it about the room from wall to wall; pushed and overthrew one
+another in their struggles to kick it; cursed and screamed and sang
+snatches of ribald songs as the battered head bounded about the room
+as if in terror and trying to escape.  At last it shot out of the
+door into the hall, followed by all, with tumultuous haste.  That
+moment the door closed with a sharp concussion.  Saylor was alone,
+in dead silence.
+
+Carefully putting away his pistol, which all the time he had held in
+his hand, he went to a window and looked out.  The street was
+deserted and silent; the lamps were extinguished; the roofs and
+chimneys of the houses were sharply outlined against the dawn-light
+in the east.  He left the house, the door yielding easily to his
+hand, and walked to the Commercial office.  The city editor was
+still in his office--asleep.  Saylor waked him and said:  "I have
+been at the haunted house."
+
+The editor stared blankly as if not wholly awake.  "Good God!" he
+cried, "are you Saylor?"
+
+"Yes--why not?"  The editor made no answer, but continued staring.
+
+"I passed the night there--it seems," said Saylor.
+
+"They say that things were uncommonly quiet out there," the editor
+said, trifling with a paper-weight upon which he had dropped his
+eyes, "did anything occur?"
+
+"Nothing whatever."
+
+
+
+A VINE ON A HOUSE
+
+
+
+About three miles from the little town of Norton, in Missouri, on
+the road leading to Maysville, stands an old house that was last
+occupied by a family named Harding.  Since 1886 no one has lived in
+it, nor is anyone likely to live in it again.  Time and the disfavor
+of persons dwelling thereabout are converting it into a rather
+picturesque ruin.  An observer unacquainted with its history would
+hardly put it into the category of "haunted houses," yet in all the
+region round such is its evil reputation.  Its windows are without
+glass, its doorways without doors; there are wide breaches in the
+shingle roof, and for lack of paint the weatherboarding is a dun
+gray.  But these unfailing signs of the supernatural are partly
+concealed and greatly softened by the abundant foliage of a large
+vine overrunning the entire structure.  This vine--of a species
+which no botanist has ever been able to name--has an important part
+in the story of the house.
+
+The Harding family consisted of Robert Harding, his wife Matilda,
+Miss Julia Went, who was her sister, and two young children.  Robert
+Harding was a silent, cold-mannered man who made no friends in the
+neighborhood and apparently cared to make none.  He was about forty
+years old, frugal and industrious, and made a living from the little
+farm which is now overgrown with brush and brambles.  He and his
+sister-in-law were rather tabooed by their neighbors, who seemed to
+think that they were seen too frequently together--not entirely
+their fault, for at these times they evidently did not challenge
+observation.  The moral code of rural Missouri is stern and
+exacting.
+
+Mrs. Harding was a gentle, sad-eyed woman, lacking a left foot.
+
+At some time in 1884 it became known that she had gone to visit her
+mother in Iowa.  That was what her husband said in reply to
+inquiries, and his manner of saying it did not encourage further
+questioning.  She never came back, and two years later, without
+selling his farm or anything that was his, or appointing an agent to
+look after his interests, or removing his household goods, Harding,
+with the rest of the family, left the country.  Nobody knew whither
+he went; nobody at that time cared.  Naturally, whatever was movable
+about the place soon disappeared and the deserted house became
+"haunted" in the manner of its kind.
+
+One summer evening, four or five years later, the Rev. J. Gruber, of
+Norton, and a Maysville attorney named Hyatt met on horseback in
+front of the Harding place.  Having business matters to discuss,
+they hitched their animals and going to the house sat on the porch
+to talk.  Some humorous reference to the somber reputation of the
+place was made and forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of
+their business affairs until it grew almost dark.  The evening was
+oppressively warm, the air stagnant.
+
+Presently both men started from their seats in surprise:  a long
+vine that covered half the front of the house and dangled its
+branches from the edge of the porch above them was visibly and
+audibly agitated, shaking violently in every stem and leaf.
+
+"We shall have a storm," Hyatt exclaimed.
+
+Gruber said nothing, but silently directed the other's attention to
+the foliage of adjacent trees, which showed no movement; even the
+delicate tips of the boughs silhouetted against the clear sky were
+motionless.  They hastily passed down the steps to what had been a
+lawn and looked upward at the vine, whose entire length was now
+visible.  It continued in violent agitation, yet they could discern
+no disturbing cause.
+
+"Let us leave," said the minister.
+
+And leave they did.  Forgetting that they had been traveling in
+opposite directions, they rode away together.  They went to Norton,
+where they related their strange experience to several discreet
+friends.  The next evening, at about the same hour, accompanied by
+two others whose names are not recalled, they were again on the
+porch of the Harding house, and again the mysterious phenomenon
+occurred:  the vine was violently agitated while under the closest
+scrutiny from root to tip, nor did their combined strength applied
+to the trunk serve to still it.  After an hour's observation they
+retreated, no less wise, it is thought, than when they had come.
+
+No great time was required for these singular facts to rouse the
+curiosity of the entire neighborhood.  By day and by night crowds of
+persons assembled at the Harding house "seeking a sign."  It does
+not appear that any found it, yet so credible were the witnesses
+mentioned that none doubted the reality of the "manifestations" to
+which they testified.
+
+By either a happy inspiration or some destructive design, it was one
+day proposed--nobody appeared to know from whom the suggestion came-
+-to dig up the vine, and after a good deal of debate this was done.
+Nothing was found but the root, yet nothing could have been more
+strange!
+
+For five or six feet from the trunk, which had at the surface of the
+ground a diameter of several inches, it ran downward, single and
+straight, into a loose, friable earth; then it divided and
+subdivided into rootlets, fibers and filaments, most curiously
+interwoven.  When carefully freed from soil they showed a singular
+formation.  In their ramifications and doublings back upon
+themselves they made a compact network, having in size and shape an
+amazing resemblance to the human figure.  Head, trunk and limbs were
+there; even the fingers and toes were distinctly defined; and many
+professed to see in the distribution and arrangement of the fibers
+in the globular mass representing the head a grotesque suggestion of
+a face.  The figure was horizontal; the smaller roots had begun to
+unite at the breast.
+
+In point of resemblance to the human form this image was imperfect.
+At about ten inches from one of the knees, the cilia forming that
+leg had abruptly doubled backward and inward upon their course of
+growth.  The figure lacked the left foot.
+
+There was but one inference--the obvious one; but in the ensuing
+excitement as many courses of action were proposed as there were
+incapable counselors.  The matter was settled by the sheriff of the
+county, who as the lawful custodian of the abandoned estate ordered
+the root replaced and the excavation filled with the earth that had
+been removed.
+
+Later inquiry brought out only one fact of relevancy and
+significance:  Mrs. Harding had never visited her relatives in Iowa,
+nor did they know that she was supposed to have done so.
+
+Of Robert Harding and the rest of his family nothing is known.  The
+house retains its evil reputation, but the replanted vine is as
+orderly and well-behaved a vegetable as a nervous person could wish
+to sit under of a pleasant night, when the katydids grate out their
+immemorial revelation and the distant whippoorwill signifies his
+notion of what ought to be done about it.
+
+
+
+AT OLD MAN ECKERT'S
+
+
+
+Philip Eckert lived for many years in an old, weather-stained wooden
+house about three miles from the little town of Marion, in Vermont.
+There must be quite a number of persons living who remember him, not
+unkindly, I trust, and know something of the story that I am about
+to tell.
+
+"Old Man Eckert," as he was always called, was not of a sociable
+disposition and lived alone.  As he was never known to speak of his
+own affairs nobody thereabout knew anything of his past, nor of his
+relatives if he had any.  Without being particularly ungracious or
+repellent in manner or speech, he managed somehow to be immune to
+impertinent curiosity, yet exempt from the evil repute with which it
+commonly revenges itself when baffled; so far as I know, Mr.
+Eckert's renown as a reformed assassin or a retired pirate of the
+Spanish Main had not reached any ear in Marion.  He got his living
+cultivating a small and not very fertile farm.
+
+One day he disappeared and a prolonged search by his neighbors
+failed to turn him up or throw any light upon his whereabouts or
+whyabouts.  Nothing indicated preparation to leave:  all was as he
+might have left it to go to the spring for a bucket of water.  For a
+few weeks little else was talked of in that region; then "old man
+Eckert" became a village tale for the ear of the stranger.  I do not
+know what was done regarding his property--the correct legal thing,
+doubtless.  The house was standing, still vacant and conspicuously
+unfit, when I last heard of it, some twenty years afterward.
+
+Of course it came to be considered "haunted," and the customary
+tales were told of moving lights, dolorous sounds and startling
+apparitions.  At one time, about five years after the disappearance,
+these stories of the supernatural became so rife, or through some
+attesting circumstances seemed so important, that some of Marion's
+most serious citizens deemed it well to investigate, and to that end
+arranged for a night session on the premises.  The parties to this
+undertaking were John Holcomb, an apothecary; Wilson Merle, a
+lawyer, and Andrus C. Palmer, the teacher of the public school, all
+men of consequence and repute.  They were to meet at Holcomb's house
+at eight o'clock in the evening of the appointed day and go together
+to the scene of their vigil, where certain arrangements for their
+comfort, a provision of fuel and the like, for the season was
+winter, had been already made.
+
+Palmer did not keep the engagement, and after waiting a half-hour
+for him the others went to the Eckert house without him.  They
+established themselves in the principal room, before a glowing fire,
+and without other light than it gave, awaited events.  It had been
+agreed to speak as little as possible:  they did not even renew the
+exchange of views regarding the defection of Palmer, which had
+occupied their minds on the way.
+
+Probably an hour had passed without incident when they heard (not
+without emotion, doubtless) the sound of an opening door in the rear
+of the house, followed by footfalls in the room adjoining that in
+which they sat.  The watchers rose to their feet, but stood firm,
+prepared for whatever might ensue.  A long silence followed--how
+long neither would afterward undertake to say.  Then the door
+between the two rooms opened and a man entered.
+
+It was Palmer.  He was pale, as if from excitement--as pale as the
+others felt themselves to be.  His manner, too, was singularly
+distrait:  he neither responded to their salutations nor so much as
+looked at them, but walked slowly across the room in the light of
+the failing fire and opening the front door passed out into the
+darkness.
+
+It seems to have been the first thought of both men that Palmer was
+suffering from fright--that something seen, heard or imagined in the
+back room had deprived him of his senses.  Acting on the same
+friendly impulse both ran after him through the open door.  But
+neither they nor anyone ever again saw or heard of Andrus Palmer!
+
+This much was ascertained the next morning.  During the session of
+Messrs. Holcomb and Merle at the "haunted house" a new snow had
+fallen to a depth of several inches upon the old.  In this snow
+Palmer's trail from his lodging in the village to the back door of
+the Eckert house was conspicuous.  But there it ended:  from the
+front door nothing led away but the tracks of the two men who swore
+that he preceded them.  Palmer's disappearance was as complete as
+that of "old man Eckert" himself--whom, indeed, the editor of the
+local paper somewhat graphically accused of having "reached out and
+pulled him in."
+
+
+
+THE SPOOK HOUSE
+
+
+
+On the road leading north from Manchester, in eastern Kentucky, to
+Booneville, twenty miles away, stood, in 1862, a wooden plantation
+house of a somewhat better quality than most of the dwellings in
+that region.  The house was destroyed by fire in the year following-
+-probably by some stragglers from the retreating column of General
+George W. Morgan, when he was driven from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio
+river by General Kirby Smith.  At the time of its destruction, it
+had for four or five years been vacant.  The fields about it were
+overgrown with brambles, the fences gone, even the few negro
+quarters, and out-houses generally, fallen partly into ruin by
+neglect and pillage; for the negroes and poor whites of the vicinity
+found in the building and fences an abundant supply of fuel, of
+which they availed themselves without hesitation, openly and by
+daylight.  By daylight alone; after nightfall no human being except
+passing strangers ever went near the place.
+
+It was known as the "Spook House."  That it was tenanted by evil
+spirits, visible, audible and active, no one in all that region
+doubted any more than he doubted what he was told of Sundays by the
+traveling preacher.  Its owner's opinion of the matter was unknown;
+he and his family had disappeared one night and no trace of them had
+ever been found.  They left everything--household goods, clothing,
+provisions, the horses in the stable, the cows in the field, the
+negroes in the quarters--all as it stood; nothing was missing--
+except a man, a woman, three girls, a boy and a babe!  It was not
+altogether surprising that a plantation where seven human beings
+could be simultaneously effaced and nobody the wiser should be under
+some suspicion.
+
+One night in June, 1859, two citizens of Frankfort, Col. J. C.
+McArdle, a lawyer, and Judge Myron Veigh, of the State Militia, were
+driving from Booneville to Manchester.  Their business was so
+important that they decided to push on, despite the darkness and the
+mutterings of an approaching storm, which eventually broke upon them
+just as they arrived opposite the "Spook House."  The lightning was
+so incessant that they easily found their way through the gateway
+and into a shed, where they hitched and unharnessed their team.
+They then went to the house, through the rain, and knocked at all
+the doors without getting any response.  Attributing this to the
+continuous uproar of the thunder they pushed at one of the doors,
+which yielded.  They entered without further ceremony and closed the
+door.  That instant they were in darkness and silence.  Not a gleam
+of the lightning's unceasing blaze penetrated the windows or
+crevices; not a whisper of the awful tumult without reached them
+there.  It was as if they had suddenly been stricken blind and deaf,
+and McArdle afterward said that for a moment he believed himself to
+have been killed by a stroke of lightning as he crossed the
+threshold.  The rest of this adventure can as well be related in his
+own words, from the Frankfort Advocate of August 6, 1876:
+
+"When I had somewhat recovered from the dazing effect of the
+transition from uproar to silence, my first impulse was to reopen
+the door which I had closed, and from the knob of which I was not
+conscious of having removed my hand; I felt it distinctly, still in
+the clasp of my fingers.  My notion was to ascertain by stepping
+again into the storm whether I had been deprived of sight and
+hearing.  I turned the doorknob and pulled open the door.  It led
+into another room!
+
+"This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish light, the source
+of which I could not determine, making everything distinctly
+visible, though nothing was sharply defined.  Everything, I say, but
+in truth the only objects within the blank stone walls of that room
+were human corpses.  In number they were perhaps eight or ten--it
+may well be understood that I did not truly count them.  They were
+of different ages, or rather sizes, from infancy up, and of both
+sexes.  All were prostrate on the floor, excepting one, apparently a
+young woman, who sat up, her back supported by an angle of the wall.
+A babe was clasped in the arms of another and older woman.  A half-
+grown lad lay face downward across the legs of a full-bearded man.
+One or two were nearly naked, and the hand of a young girl held the
+fragment of a gown which she had torn open at the breast.  The
+bodies were in various stages of decay, all greatly shrunken in face
+and figure.  Some were but little more than skeletons.
+
+"While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle and
+still holding open the door, by some unaccountable perversity my
+attention was diverted from the shocking scene and concerned itself
+with trifles and details.  Perhaps my mind, with an instinct of
+self-preservation, sought relief in matters which would relax its
+dangerous tension.  Among other things, I observed that the door
+that I was holding open was of heavy iron plates, riveted.
+Equidistant from one another and from the top and bottom, three
+strong bolts protruded from the beveled edge.  I turned the knob and
+they were retracted flush with the edge; released it, and they shot
+out.  It was a spring lock.  On the inside there was no knob, nor
+any kind of projection--a smooth surface of iron.
+
+"While noting these things with an interest and attention which it
+now astonishes me to recall I felt myself thrust aside, and Judge
+Veigh, whom in the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings I had
+altogether forgotten, pushed by me into the room.  'For God's sake,'
+I cried, 'do not go in there!  Let us get out of this dreadful
+place!'
+
+"He gave no heed to my entreaties, but (as fearless a gentleman as
+lived in all the South) walked quickly to the center of the room,
+knelt beside one of the bodies for a closer examination and tenderly
+raised its blackened and shriveled head in his hands.  A strong
+disagreeable odor came through the doorway, completely overpowering
+me.  My senses reeled; I felt myself falling, and in clutching at
+the edge of the door for support pushed it shut with a sharp click!
+
+"I remember no more:  six weeks later I recovered my reason in a
+hotel at Manchester, whither I had been taken by strangers the next
+day.  For all these weeks I had suffered from a nervous fever,
+attended with constant delirium.  I had been found lying in the road
+several miles away from the house; but how I had escaped from it to
+get there I never knew.  On recovery, or as soon as my physicians
+permitted me to talk, I inquired the fate of Judge Veigh, whom (to
+quiet me, as I now know) they represented as well and at home.
+
+"No one believed a word of my story, and who can wonder?  And who
+can imagine my grief when, arriving at my home in Frankfort two
+months later, I learned that Judge Veigh had never been heard of
+since that night?  I then regretted bitterly the pride which since
+the first few days after the recovery of my reason had forbidden me
+to repeat my discredited story and insist upon its truth.
+
+"With all that afterward occurred--the examination of the house; the
+failure to find any room corresponding to that which I have
+described; the attempt to have me adjudged insane, and my triumph
+over my accusers--the readers of the Advocate are familiar.  After
+all these years I am still confident that excavations which I have
+neither the legal right to undertake nor the wealth to make would
+disclose the secret of the disappearance of my unhappy friend, and
+possibly of the former occupants and owners of the deserted and now
+destroyed house.  I do not despair of yet bringing about such a
+search, and it is a source of deep grief to me that it has been
+delayed by the undeserved hostility and unwise incredulity of the
+family and friends of the late Judge Veigh."
+
+Colonel McArdle died in Frankfort on the thirteenth day of December,
+in the year 1879.
+
+
+
+THE OTHER LODGERS
+
+
+
+"In order to take that train," said Colonel Levering, sitting in the
+Waldorf-Astoria hotel, "you will have to remain nearly all night in
+Atlanta.  That is a fine city, but I advise you not to put up at the
+Breathitt House, one of the principal hotels.  It is an old wooden
+building in urgent need of repairs.  There are breaches in the walls
+that you could throw a cat through.  The bedrooms have no locks on
+the doors, no furniture but a single chair in each, and a bedstead
+without bedding--just a mattress.  Even these meager accommodations
+you cannot be sure that you will have in monopoly; you must take
+your chance of being stowed in with a lot of others.  Sir, it is a
+most abominable hotel.
+
+"The night that I passed in it was an uncomfortable night.  I got in
+late and was shown to my room on the ground floor by an apologetic
+night-clerk with a tallow candle, which he considerately left with
+me.  I was worn out by two days and a night of hard railway travel
+and had not entirely recovered from a gunshot wound in the head,
+received in an altercation.  Rather than look for better quarters I
+lay down on the mattress without removing my clothing and fell
+asleep.
+
+"Along toward morning I awoke.  The moon had risen and was shining
+in at the uncurtained window, illuminating the room with a soft,
+bluish light which seemed, somehow, a bit spooky, though I dare say
+it had no uncommon quality; all moonlight is that way if you will
+observe it.  Imagine my surprise and indignation when I saw the
+floor occupied by at least a dozen other lodgers!  I sat up,
+earnestly damning the management of that unthinkable hotel, and was
+about to spring from the bed to go and make trouble for the night-
+clerk--him of the apologetic manner and the tallow candle--when
+something in the situation affected me with a strange indisposition
+to move.  I suppose I was what a story-writer might call 'frozen
+with terror.'  For those men were obviously all dead!
+
+"They lay on their backs, disposed orderly along three sides of the
+room, their feet to the walls--against the other wall, farthest from
+the door, stood my bed and the chair.  All the faces were covered,
+but under their white cloths the features of the two bodies that lay
+in the square patch of moonlight near the window showed in sharp
+profile as to nose and chin.
+
+"I thought this a bad dream and tried to cry out, as one does in a
+nightmare, but could make no sound.  At last, with a desperate
+effort I threw my feet to the floor and passing between the two rows
+of clouted faces and the two bodies that lay nearest the door, I
+escaped from the infernal place and ran to the office.  The night-
+clerk was there, behind the desk, sitting in the dim light of
+another tallow candle--just sitting and staring.  He did not rise:
+my abrupt entrance produced no effect upon him, though I must have
+looked a veritable corpse myself.  It occurred to me then that I had
+not before really observed the fellow.  He was a little chap, with a
+colorless face and the whitest, blankest eyes I ever saw.  He had no
+more expression than the back of my hand.  His clothing was a dirty
+gray.
+
+"'Damn you!' I said; 'what do you mean?'
+
+"Just the same, I was shaking like a leaf in the wind and did not
+recognize my own voice.
+
+"The night-clerk rose, bowed (apologetically) and--well, he was no
+longer there, and at that moment I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder
+from behind.  Just fancy that if you can!  Unspeakably frightened, I
+turned and saw a portly, kind-faced gentleman, who asked:
+
+"'What is the matter, my friend?'
+
+"I was not long in telling him, but before I made an end of it he
+went pale himself.  'See here,' he said, 'are you telling the
+truth?'
+
+"I had now got myself in hand and terror had given place to
+indignation.  'If you dare to doubt it,' I said, 'I'll hammer the
+life out of you!'
+
+"'No,' he replied, 'don't do that; just sit down till I tell you.
+This is not a hotel.  It used to be; afterward it was a hospital.
+Now it is unoccupied, awaiting a tenant.  The room that you mention
+was the dead-room--there were always plenty of dead.  The fellow
+that you call the night-clerk used to be that, but later he booked
+the patients as they were brought in.  I don't understand his being
+here.  He has been dead a few weeks.'
+
+"'And who are you?' I blurted out.
+
+"'Oh, I look after the premises.  I happened to be passing just now,
+and seeing a light in here came in to investigate.  Let us have a
+look into that room,' he added, lifting the sputtering candle from
+the desk.
+
+"'I'll see you at the devil first!' said I, bolting out of the door
+into the street.
+
+"Sir, that Breathitt House, in Atlanta, is a beastly place!  Don't
+you stop there."
+
+"God forbid!  Your account of it certainly does not suggest comfort.
+By the way, Colonel, when did all that occur?"
+
+"In September, 1864--shortly after the siege."
+
+
+
+THE THING AT NOLAN
+
+
+
+To the south of where the road between Leesville and Hardy, in the
+State of Missouri, crosses the east fork of May Creek stands an
+abandoned house.  Nobody has lived in it since the summer of 1879,
+and it is fast going to pieces.  For some three years before the
+date mentioned above, it was occupied by the family of Charles May,
+from one of whose ancestors the creek near which it stands took its
+name.
+
+Mr. May's family consisted of a wife, an adult son and two young
+girls.  The son's name was John--the names of the daughters are
+unknown to the writer of this sketch.
+
+John May was of a morose and surly disposition, not easily moved to
+anger, but having an uncommon gift of sullen, implacable hate.  His
+father was quite otherwise; of a sunny, jovial disposition, but with
+a quick temper like a sudden flame kindled in a wisp of straw, which
+consumes it in a flash and is no more.  He cherished no resentments,
+and his anger gone, was quick to make overtures for reconciliation.
+He had a brother living near by who was unlike him in respect of all
+this, and it was a current witticism in the neighborhood that John
+had inherited his disposition from his uncle.
+
+One day a misunderstanding arose between father and son, harsh words
+ensued, and the father struck the son full in the face with his
+fist.  John quietly wiped away the blood that followed the blow,
+fixed his eyes upon the already penitent offender and said with cold
+composure, "You will die for that."
+
+The words were overheard by two brothers named Jackson, who were
+approaching the men at the moment; but seeing them engaged in a
+quarrel they retired, apparently unobserved.  Charles May afterward
+related the unfortunate occurrence to his wife and explained that he
+had apologized to the son for the hasty blow, but without avail; the
+young man not only rejected his overtures, but refused to withdraw
+his terrible threat.  Nevertheless, there was no open rupture of
+relations:  John continued living with the family, and things went
+on very much as before.
+
+One Sunday morning in June, 1879, about two weeks after what has
+been related, May senior left the house immediately after breakfast,
+taking a spade.  He said he was going to make an excavation at a
+certain spring in a wood about a mile away, so that the cattle could
+obtain water.  John remained in the house for some hours, variously
+occupied in shaving himself, writing letters and reading a
+newspaper.  His manner was very nearly what it usually was; perhaps
+he was a trifle more sullen and surly.
+
+At two o'clock he left the house.  At five, he returned.  For some
+reason not connected with any interest in his movements, and which
+is not now recalled, the time of his departure and that of his
+return were noted by his mother and sisters, as was attested at his
+trial for murder.  It was observed that his clothing was wet in
+spots, as if (so the prosecution afterward pointed out) he had been
+removing blood-stains from it.  His manner was strange, his look
+wild.  He complained of illness, and going to his room took to his
+bed.
+
+May senior did not return.  Later that evening the nearest neighbors
+were aroused, and during that night and the following day a search
+was prosecuted through the wood where the spring was.  It resulted
+in little but the discovery of both men's footprints in the clay
+about the spring.  John May in the meantime had grown rapidly worse
+with what the local physician called brain fever, and in his
+delirium raved of murder, but did not say whom he conceived to have
+been murdered, nor whom he imagined to have done the deed.  But his
+threat was recalled by the brothers Jackson and he was arrested on
+suspicion and a deputy sheriff put in charge of him at his home.
+Public opinion ran strongly against him and but for his illness he
+would probably have been hanged by a mob.  As it was, a meeting of
+the neighbors was held on Tuesday and a committee appointed to watch
+the case and take such action at any time as circumstances might
+seem to warrant.
+
+On Wednesday all was changed.  From the town of Nolan, eight miles
+away, came a story which put a quite different light on the matter.
+Nolan consisted of a school house, a blacksmith's shop, a "store"
+and a half-dozen dwellings.  The store was kept by one Henry Odell,
+a cousin of the elder May.  On the afternoon of the Sunday of May's
+disappearance Mr. Odell and four of his neighbors, men of
+credibility, were sitting in the store smoking and talking.  It was
+a warm day; and both the front and the back door were open.  At
+about three o'clock Charles May, who was well known to three of
+them, entered at the front door and passed out at the rear.  He was
+without hat or coat.  He did not look at them, nor return their
+greeting, a circumstance which did not surprise, for he was
+evidently seriously hurt.  Above the left eyebrow was a wound--a
+deep gash from which the blood flowed, covering the whole left side
+of the face and neck and saturating his light-gray shirt.  Oddly
+enough, the thought uppermost in the minds of all was that he had
+been fighting and was going to the brook directly at the back of the
+store, to wash himself.
+
+Perhaps there was a feeling of delicacy--a backwoods etiquette which
+restrained them from following him to offer assistance; the court
+records, from which, mainly, this narrative is drawn, are silent as
+to anything but the fact.  They waited for him to return, but he did
+not return.
+
+Bordering the brook behind the store is a forest extending for six
+miles back to the Medicine Lodge Hills.  As soon as it became known
+in the neighborhood of the missing man's dwelling that he had been
+seen in Nolan there was a marked alteration in public sentiment and
+feeling.  The vigilance committee went out of existence without the
+formality of a resolution.  Search along the wooded bottom lands of
+May Creek was stopped and nearly the entire male population of the
+region took to beating the bush about Nolan and in the Medicine
+Lodge Hills.  But of the missing man no trace was found.
+
+One of the strangest circumstances of this strange case is the
+formal indictment and trial of a man for murder of one whose body no
+human being professed to have seen--one not known to be dead.  We
+are all more or less familiar with the vagaries and eccentricities
+of frontier law, but this instance, it is thought, is unique.
+However that may be, it is of record that on recovering from his
+illness John May was indicted for the murder of his missing father.
+Counsel for the defense appears not to have demurred and the case
+was tried on its merits.  The prosecution was spiritless and
+perfunctory; the defense easily established--with regard to the
+deceased--an alibi.  If during the time in which John May must have
+killed Charles May, if he killed him at all, Charles May was miles
+away from where John May must have been, it is plain that the
+deceased must have come to his death at the hands of someone else.
+
+John May was acquitted, immediately left the country, and has never
+been heard of from that day.  Shortly afterward his mother and
+sisters removed to St. Louis.  The farm having passed into the
+possession of a man who owns the land adjoining, and has a dwelling
+of his own, the May house has ever since been vacant, and has the
+somber reputation of being haunted.
+
+One day after the May family had left the country, some boys,
+playing in the woods along May Creek, found concealed under a mass
+of dead leaves, but partly exposed by the rooting of hogs, a spade,
+nearly new and bright, except for a spot on one edge, which was
+rusted and stained with blood.  The implement had the initials C. M.
+cut into the handle.
+
+This discovery renewed, in some degree, the public excitement of a
+few months before.  The earth near the spot where the spade was
+found was carefully examined, and the result was the finding of the
+dead body of a man.  It had been buried under two or three feet of
+soil and the spot covered with a layer of dead leaves and twigs.
+There was but little decomposition, a fact attributed to some
+preservative property in the mineral-bearing soil.
+
+Above the left eyebrow was a wound--a deep gash from which blood had
+flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and
+saturating the light-gray shirt.  The skull had been cut through by
+the blow.  The body was that of Charles May.
+
+But what was it that passed through Mr. Odell's store at Nolan?
+
+
+
+
+"MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES"
+
+
+
+
+THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD
+
+
+
+One morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six
+miles from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on
+the veranda of his dwelling.  Immediately in front of the house was
+a lawn, perhaps fifty yards in extent between the house and public
+road, or, as it was called, the "pike."  Beyond this road lay a
+close-cropped pasture of some ten acres, level and without a tree,
+rock, or any natural or artificial object on its surface.  At the
+time there was not even a domestic animal in the field.  In another
+field, beyond the pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an
+overseer.
+
+Throwing away the stump of a cigar, the planter rose, saying:  "I
+forgot to tell Andrew about those horses."  Andrew was the overseer.
+
+Williamson strolled leisurely down the gravel walk, plucking a
+flower as he went, passed across the road and into the pasture,
+pausing a moment as he closed the gate leading into it, to greet a
+passing neighbor, Armour Wren, who lived on an adjoining plantation.
+Mr. Wren was in an open carriage with his son James, a lad of
+thirteen.  When he had driven some two hundred yards from the point
+of meeting, Mr. Wren said to his son:  "I forgot to tell Mr.
+Williamson about those horses."
+
+Mr. Wren had sold to Mr. Williamson some horses, which were to have
+been sent for that day, but for some reason not now remembered it
+would be inconvenient to deliver them until the morrow.  The
+coachman was directed to drive back, and as the vehicle turned
+Williamson was seen by all three, walking leisurely across the
+pasture.  At that moment one of the coach horses stumbled and came
+near falling.  It had no more than fairly recovered itself when
+James Wren cried:  "Why, father, what has become of Mr. Williamson?"
+
+It is not the purpose of this narrative to answer that question.
+
+Mr. Wren's strange account of the matter, given under oath in the
+course of legal proceedings relating to the Williamson estate, here
+follows:
+
+"My son's exclamation caused me to look toward the spot where I had
+seen the deceased [sic] an instant before, but he was not there, nor
+was he anywhere visible.  I cannot say that at the moment I was
+greatly startled, or realized the gravity of the occurrence, though
+I thought it singular.  My son, however, was greatly astonished and
+kept repeating his question in different forms until we arrived at
+the gate.  My black boy Sam was similarly affected, even in a
+greater degree, but I reckon more by my son's manner than by
+anything he had himself observed.  [This sentence in the testimony
+was stricken out.]  As we got out of the carriage at the gate of the
+field, and while Sam was hanging [sic] the team to the fence, Mrs.
+Williamson, with her child in her arms and followed by several
+servants, came running down the walk in great excitement, crying:
+'He is gone, he is gone!  O God! what an awful thing!' and many
+other such exclamations, which I do not distinctly recollect.  I got
+from them the impression that they related to something more--than
+the mere disappearance of her husband, even if that had occurred
+before her eyes.  Her manner was wild, but not more so, I think,
+than was natural under the circumstances.  I have no reason to think
+she had at that time lost her mind.  I have never since seen nor
+heard of Mr. Williamson."
+
+This testimony, as might have been expected, was corroborated in
+almost every particular by the only other eye-witness (if that is a
+proper term)--the lad James.  Mrs. Williamson had lost her reason
+and the servants were, of course, not competent to testify.  The boy
+James Wren had declared at first that he SAW the disappearance, but
+there is nothing of this in his testimony given in court.  None of
+the field hands working in the field to which Williamson was going
+had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire
+plantation and adjoining country failed to supply a clew.  The most
+monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks, were
+current in that part of the State for many years, and probably are
+to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly
+known of the matter.  The courts decided that Williamson was dead,
+and his estate was distributed according to law.
+
+
+
+AN UNFINISHED RACE
+
+
+
+James Burne Worson was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington,
+Warwickshire, England.  He had a little shop in one of the by-ways
+leading off the road to Warwick.  In his humble sphere he was
+esteemed an honest man, although like many of his class in English
+towns he was somewhat addicted to drink.  When in liquor he would
+make foolish wagers.  On one of these too frequent occasions he was
+boasting of his prowess as a pedestrian and athlete, and the outcome
+was a match against nature.  For a stake of one sovereign he
+undertook to run all the way to Coventry and back, a distance of
+something more than forty miles.  This was on the 3d day of
+September in 1873.  He set out at once, the man with whom he had
+made the bet--whose name is not remembered--accompanied by Barham
+Wise, a linen draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer, I think,
+following in a light cart or wagon.
+
+For several miles Worson went on very well, at an easy gait, without
+apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and
+was not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them.  The three men in
+the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional
+friendly "chaff" or encouragement, as the spirit moved them.
+Suddenly--in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from
+them, and with their eyes full upon him--the man seemed to stumble,
+pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible cry and vanished!  He
+did not fall to the earth--he vanished before touching it.  No trace
+of him was ever discovered.
+
+After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless
+irresolution, the three men returned to Leamington, told their
+astonishing story and were afterward taken into custody.  But they
+were of good standing, had always been considered truthful, were
+sober at the time of the occurrence, and nothing ever transpired to
+discredit their sworn account of their extraordinary adventure,
+concerning the truth of which, nevertheless, public opinion was
+divided, throughout the United Kingdom.  If they had something to
+conceal, their choice of means is certainly one of the most amazing
+ever made by sane human beings.
+
+
+
+CHARLES ASHMORE'S TRAIL
+
+
+
+The family of Christian Ashmore consisted of his wife, his mother,
+two grown daughters, and a son of sixteen years.  They lived in
+Troy, New York, were well-to-do, respectable persons, and had many
+friends, some of whom, reading these lines, will doubtless learn for
+the first time the extraordinary fate of the young man.  From Troy
+the Ashmores moved in 1871 or 1872 to Richmond, Indiana, and a year
+or two later to the vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, where Mr. Ashmore
+bought a farm and lived on it.  At some little distance from the
+farmhouse was a spring with a constant flow of clear, cold water,
+whence the family derived its supply for domestic use at all
+seasons.
+
+On the evening of the 9th of November in 1878, at about nine
+o'clock, young Charles Ashmore left the family circle about the
+hearth, took a tin bucket and started toward the spring.  As he did
+not return, the family became uneasy, and going to the door by which
+he had left the house, his father called without receiving an
+answer.  He then lighted a lantern and with the eldest daughter,
+Martha, who insisted on accompanying him, went in search.  A light
+snow had fallen, obliterating the path, but making the young man's
+trail conspicuous; each footprint was plainly defined.  After going
+a little more than half-way--perhaps seventy-five yards--the father,
+who was in advance, halted, and elevating his lantern stood peering
+intently into the darkness ahead.
+
+"What is the matter, father?" the girl asked.
+
+This was the matter:  the trail of the young man had abruptly ended,
+and all beyond was smooth, unbroken snow.  The last footprints were
+as conspicuous as any in the line; the very nail-marks were
+distinctly visible.  Mr. Ashmore looked upward, shading his eyes
+with his hat held between them and the lantern.  The stars were
+shining; there was not a cloud in the sky; he was denied the
+explanation which had suggested itself, doubtful as it would have
+been--a new snowfall with a limit so plainly defined.  Taking a wide
+circuit round the ultimate tracks, so as to leave them undisturbed
+for further examination, the man proceeded to the spring, the girl
+following, weak and terrified.  Neither had spoken a word of what
+both had observed.  The spring was covered with ice, hours old.
+
+Returning to the house they noted the appearance of the snow on both
+sides of the trail its entire length.  No tracks led away from it.
+
+The morning light showed nothing more.  Smooth, spotless, unbroken,
+the shallow snow lay everywhere.
+
+Four days later the grief-stricken mother herself went to the spring
+for water.  She came back and related that in passing the spot where
+the footprints had ended she had heard the voice of her son and had
+been eagerly calling to him, wandering about the place, as she had
+fancied the voice to be now in one direction, now in another, until
+she was exhausted with fatigue and emotion.
+
+Questioned as to what the voice had said, she was unable to tell,
+yet averred that the words were perfectly distinct.  In a moment the
+entire family was at the place, but nothing was heard, and the voice
+was believed to be an hallucination caused by the mother's great
+anxiety and her disordered nerves.  But for months afterward, at
+irregular intervals of a few days, the voice was heard by the
+several members of the family, and by others.  All declared it
+unmistakably the voice of Charles Ashmore; all agreed that it seemed
+to come from a great distance, faintly, yet with entire distinctness
+of articulation; yet none could determine its direction, nor repeat
+its words.  The intervals of silence grew longer and longer, the
+voice fainter and farther, and by midsummer it was heard no more.
+
+If anybody knows the fate of Charles Ashmore it is probably his
+mother.  She is dead.
+
+
+
+SCIENCE TO THE FRONT
+
+
+
+In connection with this subject of "mysterious disappearance"--of
+which every memory is stored with abundant example--it is pertinent
+to note the belief of Dr. Hem, of Leipsic; not by way of
+explanation, unless the reader may choose to take it so, but because
+of its intrinsic interest as a singular speculation.  This
+distinguished scientist has expounded his views in a book entitled
+"Verschwinden und Seine Theorie," which has attracted some
+attention, "particularly," says one writer, "among the followers of
+Hegel, and mathematicians who hold to the actual existence of a so-
+called non-Euclidean space--that is to say, of space which has more
+dimensions than length, breadth, and thickness--space in which it
+would be possible to tie a knot in an endless cord and to turn a
+rubber ball inside out without 'a solution of its continuity,' or in
+other words, without breaking or cracking it."
+
+Dr. Hem believes that in the visible world there are void places--
+vacua, and something more--holes, as it were, through which animate
+and inanimate objects may fall into the invisible world and be seen
+and heard no more.  The theory is something like this:  Space is
+pervaded by luminiferous ether, which is a material thing--as much a
+substance as air or water, though almost infinitely more attenuated.
+All force, all forms of energy must be propagated in this; every
+process must take place in it which takes place at all.  But let us
+suppose that cavities exist in this otherwise universal medium, as
+caverns exist in the earth, or cells in a Swiss cheese.  In such a
+cavity there would be absolutely nothing.  It would be such a vacuum
+as cannot be artificially produced; for if we pump the air from a
+receiver there remains the luminiferous ether.  Through one of these
+cavities light could not pass, for there would be nothing to bear
+it.  Sound could not come from it; nothing could be felt in it.  It
+would not have a single one of the conditions necessary to the
+action of any of our senses.  In such a void, in short, nothing
+whatever could occur.  Now, in the words of the writer before
+quoted--the learned doctor himself nowhere puts it so concisely:  "A
+man inclosed in such a closet could neither see nor be seen; neither
+hear nor be heard; neither feel nor be felt; neither live nor die,
+for both life and death are processes which can take place only
+where there is force, and in empty space no force could exist."  Are
+these the awful conditions (some will ask) under which the friends
+of the lost are to think of them as existing, and doomed forever to
+exist?
+
+Baldly and imperfectly as here stated, Dr. Hem's theory, in so far
+as it professes to be an adequate explanation of "mysterious
+disappearances," is open to many obvious objections; to fewer as he
+states it himself in the "spacious volubility" of his book.  But
+even as expounded by its author it does not explain, and in truth is
+incompatible with some incidents of, the occurrences related in
+these memoranda:  for example, the sound of Charles Ashmore's voice.
+It is not my duty to indue facts and theories with affinity.
+
+A.B.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  The Isle of Pines was once a famous rendezvous of pirates.
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Present at a Hanging et. al.
+by Ambrose Bierce
+
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+<a href="#startoftext">Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories, by Ambrose Bierce</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Present at a Hanging et al.
+by Ambrose Bierce
+(#8 in our series by Ambrose Bierce)
+
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+Title: Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Release Date: August, 2003  [Etext #4387]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Present at a Hanging et. al.
+by Ambrose Bierce
+******This file should be named prhg10h.htm or prhg10h.zip******
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+</pre>
+<p>
+<a name="startoftext"></a>
+PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Contents:<br>
+<br>
+The Ways of Ghosts<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Present at a Hanging<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Cold Greeting<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Wireless Message<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;An Arrest<br>
+Soldier-Folk<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Man with Two Lives<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Three and One are One<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Baffled Ambuscade<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Two Military Executions<br>
+Some Haunted Houses<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Isle of Pines<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Fruitless Assignment<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Vine on a House<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;At Old Man Eckert&rsquo;s<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Spook House<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Other Lodgers<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Thing at Nolan<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Difficulty of Crossing a Field<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;An Unfinished Race<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Charles Ashmore&rsquo;s Trail<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Science to the Front<br>
+<br>
+&nbsp;<br>
+<br>
+THE WAYS OF GHOSTS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+My peculiar relation to the writer of the following narratives is such
+that I must ask the reader to overlook the absence of explanation as
+to how they came into my possession.&nbsp; Withal, my knowledge of him
+is so meager that I should rather not undertake to say if he were himself
+persuaded of the truth of what he relates; certainly such inquiries
+as I have thought it worth while to set about have not in every instance
+tended to confirmation of the statements made.&nbsp; Yet his style,
+for the most part devoid alike of artifice and art, almost baldly simple
+and direct, seems hardly compatible with the disingenuousness of a merely
+literary intention; one would call it the manner of one more concerned
+for the fruits of research than for the flowers of expression.&nbsp;
+In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim to attention by
+giving them something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously
+refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction
+as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not only have
+been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given me a somewhat
+closer relation to the work than I should care to have and to avow.
+- A. B.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PRESENT AT A HANGING<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected
+by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission
+to pass the night at his house.&nbsp; This was in 1853, when peddling
+was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended
+with considerable danger.&nbsp; The peddler with his pack traversed
+the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely
+upon the country people for hospitality.&nbsp; This brought him into
+relation with queer characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous
+in their methods of making a living, murder being an acceptable means
+to that end.&nbsp; It occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished
+pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some
+rough character and never could be traced beyond.&nbsp; This was so
+in the case of &ldquo;old man Baker,&rdquo; as he was always called.&nbsp;
+(Such names are given in the western &ldquo;settlements&rdquo; only
+to elderly persons who are not esteemed; to the general disrepute of
+social unworth is affixed the special reproach of age.)&nbsp; A peddler
+came to his house and none went away - that is all that anybody knew.<br>
+<br>
+Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well known
+in that part of the country, was driving by Baker&rsquo;s farm one night.&nbsp;
+It was not very dark: there was a bit of moon somewhere above the light
+veil of mist that lay along the earth.&nbsp; Mr. Cummings, who was at
+all times a cheerful person, was whistling a tune, which he would occasionally
+interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse.&nbsp;
+As he came to a little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the figure
+of a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background
+of a misty forest.&nbsp; The man had something strapped on his back
+and carried a heavy stick - obviously an itinerant peddler.&nbsp; His
+attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker.&nbsp;
+Mr. Cummings reined in his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave
+him a pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat in the vehicle -
+&ldquo;if you are going my way,&rdquo; he added.&nbsp; The man raised
+his head, looked him full in the face, but neither answered nor made
+any further movement.&nbsp; The minister, with good-natured persistence,
+repeated his invitation.&nbsp; At this the man threw his right hand
+forward from his side and pointed downward as he stood on the extreme
+edge of the bridge.&nbsp; Mr. Cummings looked past him, over into the
+ravine, saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man
+again.&nbsp; He had disappeared.&nbsp; The horse, which all this time
+had been uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror
+and started to run away.&nbsp; Before he had regained control of the
+animal the minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along.&nbsp;
+He looked back and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the
+same attitude as when he had first observed it.&nbsp; Then for the first
+time he was conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home
+as rapidly as his willing horse would go.<br>
+<br>
+On arriving at home he related his adventure to his family, and early
+the next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White Corwell and
+Abner Raiser, returned to the spot.&nbsp; They found the body of old
+man Baker hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge, immediately
+beneath the spot where the apparition had stood.&nbsp; A thick coating
+of dust, slightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge,
+but the only footprints were those of Mr. Cummings&rsquo; horse.<br>
+<br>
+In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose, friable earth of
+the slope below it, disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered
+by the action of water and frost.&nbsp; They were identified as those
+of the lost peddler.&nbsp; At the double inquest the coroner&rsquo;s
+jury found that Daniel Baker died by his own hand while suffering from
+temporary insanity, and that Samuel Morritz was murdered by some person
+or persons to the jury unknown.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A COLD GREETING<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+This is a story told by the late Benson Foley of San Francisco:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;In the summer of 1881 I met a man named James H. Conway, a resident
+of Franklin, Tennessee.&nbsp; He was visiting San Francisco for his
+health, deluded man, and brought me a note of introduction from Mr.
+Lawrence Barting.&nbsp; I had known Barting as a captain in the Federal
+army during the civil war.&nbsp; At its close he had settled in Franklin,
+and in time became, I had reason to think, somewhat prominent as a lawyer.&nbsp;
+Barting had always seemed to me an honorable and truthful man, and the
+warm friendship which he expressed in his note for Mr. Conway was to
+me sufficient evidence that the latter was in every way worthy of my
+confidence and esteem.&nbsp; At dinner one day Conway told me that it
+had been solemnly agreed between him and Barting that the one who died
+first should, if possible, communicate with the other from beyond the
+grave, in some unmistakable way - just how, they had left (wisely, it
+seemed to me) to be decided by the deceased, according to the opportunities
+that his altered circumstances might present.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;A few weeks after the conversation in which Mr. Conway spoke
+of this agreement, I met him one day, walking slowly down Montgomery
+street, apparently, from his abstracted air, in deep thought.&nbsp;
+He greeted me coldly with merely a movement of the head and passed on,
+leaving me standing on the walk, with half-proffered hand, surprised
+and naturally somewhat piqued.&nbsp; The next day I met him again in
+the office of the Palace Hotel, and seeing him about to repeat the disagreeable
+performance of the day before, intercepted him in a doorway, with a
+friendly salutation, and bluntly requested an explanation of his altered
+manner.&nbsp; He hesitated a moment; then, looking me frankly in the
+eyes, said:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I do not think, Mr. Foley, that I have any longer a claim
+to your friendship, since Mr. Barting appears to have withdrawn his
+own from me - for what reason, I protest I do not know.&nbsp; If he
+has not already informed you he probably will do so.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;But,&rsquo; I replied, &lsquo;I have not heard from Mr.
+Barting.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Heard from him!&rsquo; he repeated, with apparent surprise.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Why, he is here.&nbsp; I met him yesterday ten minutes before
+meeting you.&nbsp; I gave you exactly the same greeting that he gave
+me.&nbsp; I met him again not a quarter of an hour ago, and his manner
+was precisely the same: he merely bowed and passed on.&nbsp; I shall
+not soon forget your civility to me.&nbsp; Good morning, or - as it
+may please you - farewell.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;All this seemed to me singularly considerate and delicate behavior
+on the part of Mr. Conway.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;As dramatic situations and literary effects are foreign to my
+purpose I will explain at once that Mr. Barting was dead.&nbsp; He had
+died in Nashville four days before this conversation.&nbsp; Calling
+on Mr. Conway, I apprised him of our friend&rsquo;s death, showing him
+the letters announcing it.&nbsp; He was visibly affected in a way that
+forbade me to entertain a doubt of his sincerity.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;It seems incredible,&rsquo; he said, after a period of
+reflection.&nbsp; &lsquo;I suppose I must have mistaken another man
+for Barting, and that man&rsquo;s cold greeting was merely a stranger&rsquo;s
+civil acknowledgment of my own.&nbsp; I remember, indeed, that he lacked
+Barting&rsquo;s mustache.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Doubtless it was another man,&rsquo; I assented; and the
+subject was never afterward mentioned between us.&nbsp; But I had in
+my pocket a photograph of Barting, which had been inclosed in the letter
+from his widow.&nbsp; It had been taken a week before his death, and
+was without a mustache.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A WIRELESS MESSAGE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In the summer of 1896 Mr. William Holt, a wealthy manufacturer of Chicago,
+was living temporarily in a little town of central New York, the name
+of which the writer&rsquo;s memory has not retained.&nbsp; Mr. Holt
+had had &ldquo;trouble with his wife,&rdquo; from whom he had parted
+a year before.&nbsp; Whether the trouble was anything more serious than
+&ldquo;incompatibility of temper,&rdquo; he is probably the only living
+person that knows: he is not addicted to the vice of confidences.&nbsp;
+Yet he has related the incident herein set down to at least one person
+without exacting a pledge of secrecy.&nbsp; He is now living in Europe.<br>
+<br>
+One evening he had left the house of a brother whom he was visiting,
+for a stroll in the country.&nbsp; It may be assumed - whatever the
+value of the assumption in connection with what is said to have occurred
+- that his mind was occupied with reflections on his domestic infelicities
+and the distressing changes that they had wrought in his life.<br>
+<br>
+Whatever may have been his thoughts, they so possessed him that he observed
+neither the lapse of time nor whither his feet were carrying him; he
+knew only that he had passed far beyond the town limits and was traversing
+a lonely region by a road that bore no resemblance to the one by which
+he had left the village.&nbsp; In brief, he was &ldquo;lost.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Realizing his mischance, he smiled; central New York is not a region
+of perils, nor does one long remain lost in it.&nbsp; He turned about
+and went back the way that he had come.&nbsp; Before he had gone far
+he observed that the landscape was growing more distinct - was brightening.&nbsp;
+Everything was suffused with a soft, red glow in which he saw his shadow
+projected in the road before him.&nbsp; &ldquo;The moon is rising,&rdquo;
+he said to himself.&nbsp; Then he remembered that it was about the time
+of the new moon, and if that tricksy orb was in one of its stages of
+visibility it had set long before.&nbsp; He stopped and faced about,
+seeking the source of the rapidly broadening light.&nbsp; As he did
+so, his shadow turned and lay along the road in front of him as before.&nbsp;
+The light still came from behind him.&nbsp; That was surprising; he
+could not understand.&nbsp; Again he turned, and again, facing successively
+to every point of the horizon.&nbsp; Always the shadow was before -
+always the light behind, &ldquo;a still and awful red.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Holt was astonished - &ldquo;dumfounded&rdquo; is the word that he used
+in telling it - yet seems to have retained a certain intelligent curiosity.&nbsp;
+To test the intensity of the light whose nature and cause he could not
+determine, he took out his watch to see if he could make out the figures
+on the dial.&nbsp; They were plainly visible, and the hands indicated
+the hour of eleven o&rsquo;clock and twenty-five minutes.&nbsp; At that
+moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an
+almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the
+stars and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself athwart the landscape.&nbsp;
+In that unearthly illumination he saw near him, but apparently in the
+air at a considerable elevation, the figure of his wife, clad in her
+night-clothing and holding to her breast the figure of his child.&nbsp;
+Her eyes were fixed upon his with an expression which he afterward professed
+himself unable to name or describe, further than that it was &ldquo;not
+of this life.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness, in which, however,
+the apparition still showed white and motionless; then by insensible
+degrees it faded and vanished, like a bright image on the retina after
+the closing of the eyes.&nbsp; A peculiarity of the apparition, hardly
+noted at the time, but afterward recalled, was that it showed only the
+upper half of the woman&rsquo;s figure: nothing was seen below the waist.<br>
+<br>
+The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute, for gradually all
+objects of his environment became again visible.<br>
+<br>
+In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering the village at
+a point opposite to that at which he had left it.&nbsp; He soon arrived
+at the house of his brother, who hardly knew him.&nbsp; He was wild-eyed,
+haggard, and gray as a rat.&nbsp; Almost incoherently, he related his
+night&rsquo;s experience.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Go to bed, my poor fellow,&rdquo; said his brother, &ldquo;and
+- wait.&nbsp; We shall hear more of this.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+An hour later came the predestined telegram.&nbsp; Holt&rsquo;s dwelling
+in one of the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire.&nbsp; Her
+escape cut off by the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window,
+her child in her arms.&nbsp; There she had stood, motionless, apparently
+dazed.&nbsp; Just as the firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor
+had given way, and she was seen no more.<br>
+<br>
+The moment of this culminating horror was eleven o&rsquo;clock and twenty-five
+minutes, standard time.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AN ARREST<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive
+from justice.&nbsp; From the county jail where he had been confined
+to await his trial he had escaped by knocking down his jailer with an
+iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the outer door, walking
+out into the night.&nbsp; The jailer being unarmed, Brower got no weapon
+with which to defend his recovered liberty.&nbsp; As soon as he was
+out of the town he had the folly to enter a forest; this was many years
+ago, when that region was wilder than it is now.<br>
+<br>
+The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and
+as Brower had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of
+the land, he was, naturally, not long in losing himself.&nbsp; He could
+not have said if he were getting farther away from the town or going
+back to it - a most important matter to Orrin Brower.&nbsp; He knew
+that in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would
+soon be on his track and his chance of escape was very slender; but
+he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit.&nbsp; Even an added hour
+of freedom was worth having.<br>
+<br>
+Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there before
+him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the gloom.&nbsp;
+It was too late to retreat: the fugitive felt that at the first movement
+back toward the wood he would be, as he afterward explained, &ldquo;filled
+with buckshot.&rdquo;&nbsp; So the two stood there like trees, Brower
+nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart; the other - the
+emotions of the other are not recorded.<br>
+<br>
+A moment later - it may have been an hour - the moon sailed into a patch
+of unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible embodiment of Law
+lift an arm and point significantly toward and beyond him.&nbsp; He
+understood.&nbsp; Turning his back to his captor, he walked submissively
+away in the direction indicated, looking to neither the right nor the
+left; hardly daring to breathe, his head and back actually aching with
+a prophecy of buckshot.<br>
+<br>
+Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged; that
+was shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had
+coolly killed his brother-in-law.&nbsp; It is needless to relate them
+here; they came out at his trial, and the revelation of his calmness
+in confronting them came near to saving his neck.&nbsp; But what would
+you have? - when a brave man is beaten, he submits.<br>
+<br>
+So they pursued their journey jailward along the old road through the
+woods.&nbsp; Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head: just once,
+when he was in deep shadow and he knew that the other was in moonlight,
+he looked backward.&nbsp; His captor was Burton Duff, the jailer, as
+white as death and bearing upon his brow the livid mark of the iron
+bar.&nbsp; Orrin Brower had no further curiosity.<br>
+<br>
+Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but deserted;
+only the women and children remained, and they were off the streets.&nbsp;
+Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way.&nbsp; Straight up
+to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy
+iron door, pushed it open without command, entered and found himself
+in the presence of a half-dozen armed men.&nbsp; Then he turned.&nbsp;
+Nobody else entered.<br>
+<br>
+On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+SOLDIER-FOLK<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A MAN WITH TWO LIVES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Here is the queer story of David William Duck, related by himself.&nbsp;
+Duck is an old man living in Aurora, Illinois, where he is universally
+respected.&nbsp; He is commonly known, however, as &ldquo;Dead Duck.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;In the autumn of 1866 I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth
+Infantry.&nbsp; My company was one of those stationed at Fort Phil Kearney,
+commanded by Colonel Carrington.&nbsp; The country is more or less familiar
+with the history of that garrison, particularly with the slaughter by
+the Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and officers - not one escaping
+- through disobedience of orders by its commander, the brave but reckless
+Captain Fetterman.&nbsp; When that occurred, I was trying to make my
+way with important dispatches to Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn.&nbsp;
+As the country swarmed with hostile Indians, I traveled by night and
+concealed myself as best I could before daybreak.&nbsp; The better to
+do so, I went afoot, armed with a Henry rifle and carrying three days&rsquo;
+rations in my haversack.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the
+darkness a narrow ca&ntilde;on leading through a range of rocky hills.&nbsp;
+It contained many large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the hills.&nbsp;
+Behind one of these, in a clump of sage-brush, I made my bed for the
+day, and soon fell asleep.&nbsp; It seemed as if I had hardly closed
+my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was awakened by the
+report of a rifle, the bullet striking the bowlder just above my body.&nbsp;
+A band of Indians had trailed me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot
+had been fired with an execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight
+of me from the hillside above.&nbsp; The smoke of his rifle betrayed
+him, and I was no sooner on my feet than he was off his and rolling
+down the declivity.&nbsp; Then I ran in a stooping posture, dodging
+among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm of bullets from invisible
+enemies.&nbsp; The rascals did not rise and pursue, which I thought
+rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that they had to
+deal with only one man.&nbsp; The reason for their inaction was soon
+made clear.&nbsp; I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the
+limit of my run - the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a ca&ntilde;on.&nbsp;
+It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute
+of vegetation.&nbsp; In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in
+a pen.&nbsp; Pursuit was needless; they had only to wait.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They waited.&nbsp; For two days and nights, crouching behind
+a rock topped with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back,
+suffering agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance,
+I fought the fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke
+of their rifles, as they did at that of mine.&nbsp; Of course, I did
+not dare to close my eyes at night, and lack of sleep was a keen torture.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew was to
+be my last.&nbsp; I remember, rather indistinctly, that in my desperation
+and delirium I sprang out into the open and began firing my repeating
+rifle without seeing anybody to fire at.&nbsp; And I remember no more
+of that fight.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The next thing that I recollect was my pulling myself out of
+a river just at nightfall.&nbsp; I had not a rag of clothing and knew
+nothing of my whereabouts, but all that night I traveled, cold and footsore,
+toward the north.&nbsp; At daybreak I found myself at Fort C. F. Smith,
+my destination, but without my dispatches.&nbsp; The first man that
+I met was a sergeant named William Briscoe, whom I knew very well.&nbsp;
+You can fancy his astonishment at seeing me in that condition, and my
+own at his asking who the devil I was.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Dave Duck,&rsquo; I answered; &lsquo;who should I be?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;He stared like an owl.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;You do look it,&rsquo; he said, and I observed that he
+drew a little away from me.&nbsp; &lsquo;What&rsquo;s up?&rsquo; he
+added.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I told him what had happened to me the day before.&nbsp; He heard
+me through, still staring; then he said:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck I ought to inform
+you that I buried you two months ago.&nbsp; I was out with a small scouting
+party and found your body, full of bullet-holes and newly scalped -
+somewhat mutilated otherwise, too, I am sorry to say - right where you
+say you made your fight.&nbsp; Come to my tent and I&rsquo;ll show you
+your clothing and some letters that I took from your person; the commandant
+has your dispatches.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;He performed that promise.&nbsp; He showed me the clothing, which
+I resolutely put on; the letters, which I put into my pocket.&nbsp;
+He made no objection, then took me to the commandant, who heard my story
+and coldly ordered Briscoe to take me to the guardhouse.&nbsp; On the
+way I said:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Bill Briscoe, did you really and truly bury the dead body
+that you found in these togs?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Sure,&rsquo; he answered - &lsquo;just as I told you.&nbsp;
+It was Dave Duck, all right; most of us knew him.&nbsp; And now, you
+damned impostor, you&rsquo;d better tell me who you are.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;d give something to know,&rsquo; I said.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;A week later, I escaped from the guardhouse and got out of the
+country as fast as I could.&nbsp; Twice I have been back, seeking for
+that fateful spot in the hills, but unable to find it.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THREE AND ONE ARE ONE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In the year 1861 Barr Lassiter, a young man of twenty-two, lived with
+his parents and an elder sister near Carthage, Tennessee.&nbsp; The
+family were in somewhat humble circumstances, subsisting by cultivation
+of a small and not very fertile plantation.&nbsp; Owning no slaves,
+they were not rated among &ldquo;the best people&rdquo; of their neighborhood;
+but they were honest persons of good education, fairly well mannered
+and as respectable as any family could be if uncredentialed by personal
+dominion over the sons and daughters of Ham.&nbsp; The elder Lassiter
+had that severity of manner that so frequently affirms an uncompromising
+devotion to duty, and conceals a warm and affectionate disposition.&nbsp;
+He was of the iron of which martyrs are made, but in the heart of the
+matrix had lurked a nobler metal, fusible at a milder heat, yet never
+coloring nor softening the hard exterior.&nbsp; By both heredity and
+environment something of the man&rsquo;s inflexible character had touched
+the other members of the family; the Lassiter home, though not devoid
+of domestic affection, was a veritable citadel of duty, and duty - ah,
+duty is as cruel as death!<br>
+<br>
+When the war came on it found in the family, as in so many others in
+that State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the Union,
+the others savagely hostile.&nbsp; This unhappy division begot an insupportable
+domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and brother left home
+with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal army not a hand was laid
+in his, not a word of farewell was spoken, not a good wish followed
+him out into the world whither he went to meet with such spirit as he
+might whatever fate awaited him.<br>
+<br>
+Making his way to Nashville, already occupied by the Army of General
+Buell, he enlisted in the first organization that he found, a Kentucky
+regiment of cavalry, and in due time passed through all the stages of
+military evolution from raw recruit to experienced trooper.&nbsp; A
+right good trooper he was, too, although in his oral narrative from
+which this tale is made there was no mention of that; the fact was learned
+from his surviving comrades.&nbsp; For Barr Lassiter has answered &ldquo;Here&rdquo;
+to the sergeant whose name is Death.<br>
+<br>
+Two years after he had joined it his regiment passed through the region
+whence he had come.&nbsp; The country thereabout had suffered severely
+from the ravages of war, having been occupied alternately (and simultaneously)
+by the belligerent forces, and a sanguinary struggle had occurred in
+the immediate vicinity of the Lassiter homestead.&nbsp; But of this
+the young trooper was not aware.<br>
+<br>
+Finding himself in camp near his home, he felt a natural longing to
+see his parents and sister, hoping that in them, as in him, the unnatural
+animosities of the period had been softened by time and separation.&nbsp;
+Obtaining a leave of absence, he set foot in the late summer afternoon,
+and soon after the rising of the full moon was walking up the gravel
+path leading to the dwelling in which he had been born.<br>
+<br>
+Soldiers in war age rapidly, and in youth two years are a long time.&nbsp;
+Barr Lassiter felt himself an old man, and had almost expected to find
+the place a ruin and a desolation.&nbsp; Nothing, apparently, was changed.&nbsp;
+At the sight of each dear and familiar object he was profoundly affected.&nbsp;
+His heart beat audibly, his emotion nearly suffocated him; an ache was
+in his throat.&nbsp; Unconsciously he quickened his pace until he almost
+ran, his long shadow making grotesque efforts to keep its place beside
+him.<br>
+<br>
+The house was unlighted, the door open.&nbsp; As he approached and paused
+to recover control of himself his father came out and stood bare-headed
+in the moonlight.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Father!&rdquo; cried the young man, springing forward with outstretched
+hand - &ldquo;Father!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The elder man looked him sternly in the face, stood a moment motionless
+and without a word withdrew into the house.&nbsp; Bitterly disappointed,
+humiliated, inexpressibly hurt and altogether unnerved, the soldier
+dropped upon a rustic seat in deep dejection, supporting his head upon
+his trembling hand.&nbsp; But he would not have it so: he was too good
+a soldier to accept repulse as defeat.&nbsp; He rose and entered the
+house, passing directly to the &ldquo;sitting-room.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+It was dimly lighted by an uncurtained east window.&nbsp; On a low stool
+by the hearthside, the only article of furniture in the place, sat his
+mother, staring into a fireplace strewn with blackened embers and cold
+ashes.&nbsp; He spoke to her - tenderly, interrogatively, and with hesitation,
+but she neither answered, nor moved, nor seemed in any way surprised.&nbsp;
+True, there had been time for her husband to apprise her of their guilty
+son&rsquo;s return.&nbsp; He moved nearer and was about to lay his hand
+upon her arm, when his sister entered from an adjoining room, looked
+him full in the face, passed him without a sign of recognition and left
+the room by a door that was partly behind him.&nbsp; He had turned his
+head to watch her, but when she was gone his eyes again sought his mother.&nbsp;
+She too had left the place.<br>
+<br>
+Barr Lassiter strode to the door by which he had entered.&nbsp; The
+moonlight on the lawn was tremulous, as if the sward were a rippling
+sea.&nbsp; The trees and their black shadows shook as in a breeze.&nbsp;
+Blended with its borders, the gravel walk seemed unsteady and insecure
+to step on.&nbsp; This young soldier knew the optical illusions produced
+by tears.&nbsp; He felt them on his cheek, and saw them sparkle on the
+breast of his trooper&rsquo;s jacket.&nbsp; He left the house and made
+his way back to camp.<br>
+<br>
+The next day, with no very definite intention, with no dominant feeling
+that he could rightly have named, he again sought the spot.&nbsp; Within
+a half-mile of it he met Bushrod Albro, a former playfellow and schoolmate,
+who greeted him warmly.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I am going to visit my home,&rdquo; said the soldier.<br>
+<br>
+The other looked at him rather sharply, but said nothing.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; continued Lassiter, &ldquo;that my folks have
+not changed, but - &rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;There have been changes,&rdquo; Albro interrupted - &ldquo;everything
+changes.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll go with you if you don&rsquo;t mind.&nbsp;
+We can talk as we go.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But Albro did not talk.<br>
+<br>
+Instead of a house they found only fire-blackened foundations of stone,
+enclosing an area of compact ashes pitted by rains.<br>
+<br>
+Lassiter&rsquo;s astonishment was extreme.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I could not find the right way to tell you,&rdquo; said Albro.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;In the fight a year ago your house was burned by a Federal shell.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;And my family - where are they?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;In Heaven, I hope.&nbsp; All were killed by the shell.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Connecting Readyville and Woodbury was a good, hard turnpike nine or
+ten miles long.&nbsp; Readyville was an outpost of the Federal army
+at Murfreesboro; Woodbury had the same relation to the Confederate army
+at Tullahoma.&nbsp; For months after the big battle at Stone River these
+outposts were in constant quarrel, most of the trouble occurring, naturally,
+on the turnpike mentioned, between detachments of cavalry.&nbsp; Sometimes
+the infantry and artillery took a hand in the game by way of showing
+their good-will.<br>
+<br>
+One night a squadron of Federal horse commanded by Major Seidel, a gallant
+and skillful officer, moved out from Readyville on an uncommonly hazardous
+enterprise requiring secrecy, caution and silence.<br>
+<br>
+Passing the infantry pickets, the detachment soon afterward approached
+two cavalry videttes staring hard into the darkness ahead.&nbsp; There
+should have been three.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Where is your other man?&rdquo; said the major.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+ordered Dunning to be here to-night.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;He rode forward, sir,&rdquo; the man replied.&nbsp; &ldquo;There
+was a little firing afterward, but it was a long way to the front.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;It was against orders and against sense for Dunning to do that,&rdquo;
+said the officer, obviously vexed.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why did he ride forward?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know, sir; he seemed mighty restless.&nbsp; Guess
+he was skeered.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+When this remarkable reasoner and his companion had been absorbed into
+the expeditionary force, it resumed its advance.&nbsp; Conversation
+was forbidden; arms and accouterments were denied the right to rattle.&nbsp;
+The horses&rsquo; tramping was all that could be heard and the movement
+was slow in order to have as little as possible of that.&nbsp; It was
+after midnight and pretty dark, although there was a bit of moon somewhere
+behind the masses of cloud.<br>
+<br>
+Two or three miles along, the head of the column approached a dense
+forest of cedars bordering the road on both sides.&nbsp; The major commanded
+a halt by merely halting, and, evidently himself a bit &ldquo;skeered,&rdquo;
+rode on alone to reconnoiter.&nbsp; He was followed, however, by his
+adjutant and three troopers, who remained a little distance behind and,
+unseen by him, saw all that occurred.<br>
+<br>
+After riding about a hundred yards toward the forest, the major suddenly
+and sharply reined in his horse and sat motionless in the saddle.&nbsp;
+Near the side of the road, in a little open space and hardly ten paces
+away, stood the figure of a man, dimly visible and as motionless as
+he.&nbsp; The major&rsquo;s first feeling was that of satisfaction in
+having left his cavalcade behind; if this were an enemy and should escape
+he would have little to report.&nbsp; The expedition was as yet undetected.<br>
+<br>
+Some dark object was dimly discernible at the man&rsquo;s feet; the
+officer could not make it out.&nbsp; With the instinct of the true cavalryman
+and a particular indisposition to the discharge of firearms, he drew
+his saber.&nbsp; The man on foot made no movement in answer to the challenge.&nbsp;
+The situation was tense and a bit dramatic.&nbsp; Suddenly the moon
+burst through a rift in the clouds and, himself in the shadow of a group
+of great oaks, the horseman saw the footman clearly, in a patch of white
+light.&nbsp; It was Trooper Dunning, unarmed and bareheaded.&nbsp; The
+object at his feet resolved itself into a dead horse, and at a right
+angle across the animal&rsquo;s neck lay a dead man, face upward in
+the moonlight.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Dunning has had the fight of his life,&rdquo; thought the major,
+and was about to ride forward.&nbsp; Dunning raised his hand, motioning
+him back with a gesture of warning; then, lowering the arm, he pointed
+to the place where the road lost itself in the blackness of the cedar
+forest.<br>
+<br>
+The major understood, and turning his horse rode back to the little
+group that had followed him and was already moving to the rear in fear
+of his displeasure, and so returned to the head of his command.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Dunning is just ahead there,&rdquo; he said to the captain of
+his leading company.&nbsp; &ldquo;He has killed his man and will have
+something to report.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Right patiently they waited, sabers drawn, but Dunning did not come.&nbsp;
+In an hour the day broke and the whole force moved cautiously forward,
+its commander not altogether satisfied with his faith in Private Dunning.&nbsp;
+The expedition had failed, but something remained to be done.<br>
+<br>
+In the little open space off the road they found the fallen horse.&nbsp;
+At a right angle across the animal&rsquo;s neck face upward, a bullet
+in the brain, lay the body of Trooper Dunning, stiff as a statue, hours
+dead.<br>
+<br>
+Examination disclosed abundant evidence that within a half-hour the
+cedar forest had been occupied by a strong force of Confederate infantry
+- an ambuscade.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In the spring of the year 1862 General Buell&rsquo;s big army lay in
+camp, licking itself into shape for the campaign which resulted in the
+victory at Shiloh.&nbsp; It was a raw, untrained army, although some
+of its fractions had seen hard enough service, with a good deal of fighting,
+in the mountains of Western Virginia, and in Kentucky.&nbsp; The war
+was young and soldiering a new industry, imperfectly understood by the
+young American of the period, who found some features of it not altogether
+to his liking.&nbsp; Chief among these was that essential part of discipline,
+subordination.&nbsp; To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating
+fallacy that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority
+is not easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his &ldquo;green
+and salad days&rdquo; is among the worst known.&nbsp; That is how it
+happened that one of Buell&rsquo;s men, Private Bennett Story Greene,
+committed the indiscretion of striking his officer.&nbsp; Later in the
+war he would not have done that; like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would
+have &ldquo;seen him damned&rdquo; first.&nbsp; But time for reformation
+of his military manners was denied him: he was promptly arrested on
+complaint of the officer, tried by court-martial and sentenced to be
+shot.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;You might have thrashed me and let it go at that,&rdquo; said
+the condemned man to the complaining witness; &ldquo;that is what you
+used to do at school, when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good
+as you.&nbsp; Nobody saw me strike you; discipline would not have suffered
+much.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that,&rdquo; said the
+lieutenant.&nbsp; &ldquo;Will you forgive me?&nbsp; That is what I came
+to see you about.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door of
+the guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained that the
+time allowed for the interview had expired.&nbsp; The next morning,
+when in the presence of the whole brigade Private Greene was shot to
+death by a squad of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley turned his back
+upon the sorry performance and muttered a prayer for mercy, in which
+himself was included.<br>
+<br>
+A few weeks afterward, as Buell&rsquo;s leading division was being ferried
+over the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant&rsquo;s beaten
+army, night was coming on, black and stormy.&nbsp; Through the wreck
+of battle the division moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the
+enemy, who had withdrawn a little to reform his lines.&nbsp; But for
+the lightning the darkness was absolute.&nbsp; Never for a moment did
+it cease, and ever when the thunder did not crack and roar were heard
+the moans of the wounded among whom the men felt their way with their
+feet, and upon whom they stumbled in the gloom.&nbsp; The dead were
+there, too - there were dead a-plenty.<br>
+<br>
+In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance had
+paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle, and skirmishers
+had been thrown forward, word was passed along to call the roll.&nbsp;
+The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley&rsquo;s company stepped to the
+front and began to name the men in alphabetical order.&nbsp; He had
+no written roll, but a good memory.&nbsp; The men answered to their
+names as he ran down the alphabet to G.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Gorham.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Grayrock.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The sergeant&rsquo;s good memory was affected by habit:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Greene.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable!<br>
+<br>
+A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from
+an electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident.&nbsp;
+The sergeant paled and paused.&nbsp; The captain strode quickly to his
+side and said sharply:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Call that name again.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field
+of curiosity concerning the Unknown.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Bennett Greene.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
+between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line
+turned and squarely confronted each other.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Once more,&rdquo; commanded the inexorable investigator, and
+once more came - a trifle tremulously - the name of the dead man:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Bennett Story Greene.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond
+the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of
+an approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly,
+punctuating as with a full stop the captain&rsquo;s exclamation, &ldquo;What
+the devil does it mean?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;It means this,&rdquo; he said, throwing open his coat and displaying
+a visibly broadening stain of crimson on his breast.&nbsp; His knees
+gave way; he fell awkwardly and lay dead.<br>
+<br>
+A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the congested
+front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not again
+under fire.&nbsp; Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions,
+ever again signify his presence at one.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+SOME HAUNTED HOUSES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE ISLE OF PINES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+For many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old
+man named Herman Deluse.&nbsp; Very little was known of his history,
+for he would neither speak of it himself nor suffer others.&nbsp; It
+was a common belief among his neighbors that he had been a pirate -
+if upon any better evidence than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses,
+and ancient flintlock pistols, no one knew.&nbsp; He lived entirely
+alone in a small house of four rooms, falling rapidly into decay and
+never repaired further than was required by the weather.&nbsp; It stood
+on a slight elevation in the midst of a large, stony field overgrown
+with brambles, and cultivated in patches and only in the most primitive
+way.&nbsp; It was his only visible property, but could hardly have yielded
+him a living, simple and few as were his wants.&nbsp; He seemed always
+to have ready money, and paid cash for all his purchases at the village
+stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two or three times at the
+same place until after the lapse of a considerable time.&nbsp; He got
+no commendation, however, for this equitable distribution of his patronage;
+people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual attempt to conceal
+his possession of so much money.&nbsp; That he had great hoards of ill-gotten
+gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling was not reasonably
+to be doubted by any honest soul conversant with the facts of local
+tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of things.<br>
+<br>
+On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead body
+was discovered on the 10th, and physicians testified that death had
+occurred about twenty-four hours previously - precisely how, they were
+unable to say; for the <i>post-mortem </i>examination showed every organ
+to be absolutely healthy, with no indication of disorder or violence.&nbsp;
+According to them, death must have taken place about noonday, yet the
+body was found in bed.&nbsp; The verdict of the coroner&rsquo;s jury
+was that he &ldquo;came to his death by a visitation of God.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The body was buried and the public administrator took charge of the
+estate.<br>
+<br>
+A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known about
+the dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises
+by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded.&nbsp; The administrator
+locked up the house against the time when the property, real and personal,
+should be sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, the expenses
+of the sale.<br>
+<br>
+The night of November 20 was boisterous.&nbsp; A furious gale stormed
+across the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet.&nbsp;
+Great trees were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads.&nbsp;
+So wild a night had never been known in all that region, but toward
+morning the storm had blown itself out of breath and day dawned bright
+and clear.&nbsp; At about eight o&rsquo;clock that morning the Rev.
+Henry Galbraith, a well-known and highly esteemed Lutheran minister,
+arrived on foot at his house, a mile and a half from the Deluse place.&nbsp;
+Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in Cincinnati.&nbsp; He had come
+up the river in a steamboat, and landing at Gallipolis the previous
+evening had immediately obtained a horse and buggy and set out for home.&nbsp;
+The violence of the storm had delayed him over night, and in the morning
+the fallen trees had compelled him to abandon his conveyance and continue
+his journey afoot.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;But where did you pass the night?&rdquo; inquired his wife, after
+he had briefly related his adventure.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;With old Deluse at the &lsquo;Isle of Pines,&rsquo;&rdquo; <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a>
+was the laughing reply; &ldquo;and a glum enough time I had of it.&nbsp;
+He made no objection to my remaining, but not a word could I get out
+of him.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Fortunately for the interests of truth there was present at this conversation
+Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, a lawyer and <i>litt&eacute;rateur </i>of Columbus,
+the same who wrote the delightful &ldquo;Mellowcraft Papers.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr. Galbraith&rsquo;s
+answer this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the exclamations
+that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly inquired: &ldquo;How
+came you to go in there?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+This is Mr. Maren&rsquo;s version of Mr. Galbraith&rsquo;s reply:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I saw a light moving about the house, and being nearly blinded
+by the sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put
+up my horse in the old rail stable, where it is now.&nbsp; I then rapped
+at the door, and getting no invitation went in without one.&nbsp; The
+room was dark, but having matches I found a candle and lit it.&nbsp;
+I tried to enter the adjoining room, but the door was fast, and although
+I heard the old man&rsquo;s heavy footsteps in there he made no response
+to my calls.&nbsp; There was no fire on the hearth, so I made one and
+laying <i>[sic] </i>down before it with my overcoat under my head, prepared
+myself for sleep.&nbsp; Pretty soon the door that I had tried silently
+opened and the old man came in, carrying a candle.&nbsp; I spoke to
+him pleasantly, apologizing for my intrusion, but he took no notice
+of me.&nbsp; He seemed to be searching for something, though his eyes
+were unmoved in their sockets.&nbsp; I wonder if he ever walks in his
+sleep.&nbsp; He took a circuit a part of the way round the room, and
+went out the same way he had come in.&nbsp; Twice more before I slept
+he came back into the room, acting precisely the same way, and departing
+as at first.&nbsp; In the intervals I heard him tramping all over the
+house, his footsteps distinctly audible in the pauses of the storm.&nbsp;
+When I woke in the morning he had already gone out.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Maren attempted some further questioning, but was unable longer
+to restrain the family&rsquo;s tongues; the story of Deluse&rsquo;s
+death and burial came out, greatly to the good minister&rsquo;s astonishment.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The explanation of your adventure is very simple,&rdquo; said
+Mr. Maren.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe old Deluse walks in his
+sleep - not in his present one; but you evidently dream in yours.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+And to this view of the matter Mr. Galbraith was compelled reluctantly
+to assent.<br>
+<br>
+Nevertheless, a late hour of the next night found these two gentlemen,
+accompanied by a son of the minister, in the road in front of the old
+Deluse house.&nbsp; There was a light inside; it appeared now at one
+window and now at another.&nbsp; The three men advanced to the door.&nbsp;
+Just as they reached it there came from the interior a confusion of
+the most appalling sounds - the clash of weapons, steel against steel,
+sharp explosions as of firearms, shrieks of women, groans and the curses
+of men in combat!&nbsp; The investigators stood a moment, irresolute,
+frightened.&nbsp; Then Mr. Galbraith tried the door.&nbsp; It was fast.&nbsp;
+But the minister was a man of courage, a man, moreover, of Herculean
+strength.&nbsp; He retired a pace or two and rushed against the door,
+striking it with his right shoulder and bursting it from the frame with
+a loud crash.&nbsp; In a moment the three were inside.&nbsp; Darkness
+and silence!&nbsp; The only sound was the beating of their hearts.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Maren had provided himself with matches and a candle.&nbsp; With
+some difficulty, begotten of his excitement, he made a light, and they
+proceeded to explore the place, passing from room to room.&nbsp; Everything
+was in orderly arrangement, as it had been left by the sheriff; nothing
+had been disturbed.&nbsp; A light coating of dust was everywhere.&nbsp;
+A back door was partly open, as if by neglect, and their first thought
+was that the authors of the awful revelry might have escaped.&nbsp;
+The door was opened, and the light of the candle shone through upon
+the ground.&nbsp; The expiring effort of the previous night&rsquo;s
+storm had been a light fall of snow; there were no footprints; the white
+surface was unbroken.&nbsp; They closed the door and entered the last
+room of the four that the house contained - that farthest from the road,
+in an angle of the building.&nbsp; Here the candle in Mr. Maren&rsquo;s
+hand was suddenly extinguished as by a draught of air.&nbsp; Almost
+immediately followed the sound of a heavy fall.&nbsp; When the candle
+had been hastily relighted young Mr. Galbraith was seen prostrate on
+the floor at a little distance from the others.&nbsp; He was dead.&nbsp;
+In one hand the body grasped a heavy sack of coins, which later examination
+showed to be all of old Spanish mintage.&nbsp; Directly over the body
+as it lay, a board had been torn from its fastenings in the wall, and
+from the cavity so disclosed it was evident that the bag had been taken.<br>
+<br>
+Another inquest was held: another <i>post-mortem </i>examination failed
+to reveal a probable cause of death.&nbsp; Another verdict of &ldquo;the
+visitation of God&rdquo; left all at liberty to form their own conclusions.&nbsp;
+Mr. Maren contended that the young man died of excitement.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Henry Saylor, who was killed in Covington, in a quarrel with Antonio
+Finch, was a reporter on the Cincinnati <i>Commercial.&nbsp; </i>In
+the year 1859 a vacant dwelling in Vine street, in Cincinnati, became
+the center of a local excitement because of the strange sights and sounds
+said to be observed in it nightly.&nbsp; According to the testimony
+of many reputable residents of the vicinity these were inconsistent
+with any other hypothesis than that the house was haunted.&nbsp; Figures
+with something singularly unfamiliar about them were seen by crowds
+on the sidewalk to pass in and out.&nbsp; No one could say just where
+they appeared upon the open lawn on their way to the front door by which
+they entered, nor at exactly what point they vanished as they came out;
+or, rather, while each spectator was positive enough about these matters,
+no two agreed.&nbsp; They were all similarly at variance in their descriptions
+of the figures themselves.&nbsp; Some of the bolder of the curious throng
+ventured on several evenings to stand upon the doorsteps to intercept
+them, or failing in this, get a nearer look at them.&nbsp; These courageous
+men, it was said, were unable to force the door by their united strength,
+and always were hurled from the steps by some invisible agency and severely
+injured; the door immediately afterward opening, apparently of its own
+volition, to admit or free some ghostly guest.&nbsp; The dwelling was
+known as the Roscoe house, a family of that name having lived there
+for some years, and then, one by one, disappeared, the last to leave
+being an old woman.&nbsp; Stories of foul play and successive murders
+had always been rife, but never were authenticated.<br>
+<br>
+One day during the prevalence of the excitement Saylor presented himself
+at the office of the <i>Commercial </i>for orders.&nbsp; He received
+a note from the city editor which read as follows: &ldquo;Go and pass
+the night alone in the haunted house in Vine street and if anything
+occurs worth while make two columns.&rdquo;&nbsp; Saylor obeyed his
+superior; he could not afford to lose his position on the paper.<br>
+<br>
+Apprising the police of his intention, he effected an entrance through
+a rear window before dark, walked through the deserted rooms, bare of
+furniture, dusty and desolate, and seating himself at last in the parlor
+on an old sofa which he had dragged in from another room watched the
+deepening of the gloom as night came on.&nbsp; Before it was altogether
+dark the curious crowd had collected in the street, silent, as a rule,
+and expectant, with here and there a scoffer uttering his incredulity
+and courage with scornful remarks or ribald cries.&nbsp; None knew of
+the anxious watcher inside.&nbsp; He feared to make a light; the uncurtained
+windows would have betrayed his presence, subjecting him to insult,
+possibly to injury.&nbsp; Moreover, he was too conscientious to do anything
+to enfeeble his impressions and unwilling to alter any of the customary
+conditions under which the manifestations were said to occur.<br>
+<br>
+It was now dark outside, but light from the street faintly illuminated
+the part of the room that he was in.&nbsp; He had set open every door
+in the whole interior, above and below, but all the outer ones were
+locked and bolted.&nbsp; Sudden exclamations from the crowd caused him
+to spring to the window and look out.&nbsp; He saw the figure of a man
+moving rapidly across the lawn toward the building - saw it ascend the
+steps; then a projection of the wall concealed it.&nbsp; There was a
+noise as of the opening and closing of the hall door; he heard quick,
+heavy footsteps along the passage - heard them ascend the stairs - heard
+them on the uncarpeted floor of the chamber immediately overhead.<br>
+<br>
+Saylor promptly drew his pistol, and groping his way up the stairs entered
+the chamber, dimly lighted from the street.&nbsp; No one was there.&nbsp;
+He heard footsteps in an adjoining room and entered that.&nbsp; It was
+dark and silent.&nbsp; He struck his foot against some object on the
+floor, knelt by it, passed his hand over it.&nbsp; It was a human head
+- that of a woman.&nbsp; Lifting it by the hair this iron-nerved man
+returned to the half-lighted room below, carried it near the window
+and attentively examined it.&nbsp; While so engaged he was half conscious
+of the rapid opening and closing of the outer door, of footfalls sounding
+all about him.&nbsp; He raised his eyes from the ghastly object of his
+attention and saw himself the center of a crowd of men and women dimly
+seen; the room was thronged with them.&nbsp; He thought the people had
+broken in.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen,&rdquo; he said, coolly, &ldquo;you see
+me under suspicious circumstances, but&rdquo; - his voice was drowned
+in peals of laughter - such laughter as is heard in asylums for the
+insane.&nbsp; The persons about him pointed at the object in his hand
+and their merriment increased as he dropped it and it went rolling among
+their feet.&nbsp; They danced about it with gestures grotesque and attitudes
+obscene and indescribable.&nbsp; They struck it with their feet, urging
+it about the room from wall to wall; pushed and overthrew one another
+in their struggles to kick it; cursed and screamed and sang snatches
+of ribald songs as the battered head bounded about the room as if in
+terror and trying to escape.&nbsp; At last it shot out of the door into
+the hall, followed by all, with tumultuous haste.&nbsp; That moment
+the door closed with a sharp concussion.&nbsp; Saylor was alone, in
+dead silence.<br>
+<br>
+Carefully putting away his pistol, which all the time he had held in
+his hand, he went to a window and looked out.&nbsp; The street was deserted
+and silent; the lamps were extinguished; the roofs and chimneys of the
+houses were sharply outlined against the dawn-light in the east.&nbsp;
+He left the house, the door yielding easily to his hand, and walked
+to the <i>Commercial </i>office.&nbsp; The city editor was still in
+his office - asleep.&nbsp; Saylor waked him and said: &ldquo;I have
+been at the haunted house.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The editor stared blankly as if not wholly awake.&nbsp; &ldquo;Good
+God!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;are you Saylor?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Yes - why not?&rdquo;&nbsp; The editor made no answer, but continued
+staring.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I passed the night there - it seems,&rdquo; said Saylor.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They say that things were uncommonly quiet out there,&rdquo;
+the editor said, trifling with a paper-weight upon which he had dropped
+his eyes, &ldquo;did anything occur?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Nothing whatever.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A VINE ON A HOUSE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+About three miles from the little town of Norton, in Missouri, on the
+road leading to Maysville, stands an old house that was last occupied
+by a family named Harding.&nbsp; Since 1886 no one has lived in it,
+nor is anyone likely to live in it again.&nbsp; Time and the disfavor
+of persons dwelling thereabout are converting it into a rather picturesque
+ruin.&nbsp; An observer unacquainted with its history would hardly put
+it into the category of &ldquo;haunted houses,&rdquo; yet in all the
+region round such is its evil reputation.&nbsp; Its windows are without
+glass, its doorways without doors; there are wide breaches in the shingle
+roof, and for lack of paint the weatherboarding is a dun gray.&nbsp;
+But these unfailing signs of the supernatural are partly concealed and
+greatly softened by the abundant foliage of a large vine overrunning
+the entire structure.&nbsp; This vine - of a species which no botanist
+has ever been able to name - has an important part in the story of the
+house.<br>
+<br>
+The Harding family consisted of Robert Harding, his wife Matilda, Miss
+Julia Went, who was her sister, and two young children.&nbsp; Robert
+Harding was a silent, cold-mannered man who made no friends in the neighborhood
+and apparently cared to make none.&nbsp; He was about forty years old,
+frugal and industrious, and made a living from the little farm which
+is now overgrown with brush and brambles.&nbsp; He and his sister-in-law
+were rather tabooed by their neighbors, who seemed to think that they
+were seen too frequently together - not entirely their fault, for at
+these times they evidently did not challenge observation.&nbsp; The
+moral code of rural Missouri is stern and exacting.<br>
+<br>
+Mrs. Harding was a gentle, sad-eyed woman, lacking a left foot.<br>
+<br>
+At some time in 1884 it became known that she had gone to visit her
+mother in Iowa.&nbsp; That was what her husband said in reply to inquiries,
+and his manner of saying it did not encourage further questioning.&nbsp;
+She never came back, and two years later, without selling his farm or
+anything that was his, or appointing an agent to look after his interests,
+or removing his household goods, Harding, with the rest of the family,
+left the country.&nbsp; Nobody knew whither he went; nobody at that
+time cared.&nbsp; Naturally, whatever was movable about the place soon
+disappeared and the deserted house became &ldquo;haunted&rdquo; in the
+manner of its kind.<br>
+<br>
+One summer evening, four or five years later, the Rev. J. Gruber, of
+Norton, and a Maysville attorney named Hyatt met on horseback in front
+of the Harding place.&nbsp; Having business matters to discuss, they
+hitched their animals and going to the house sat on the porch to talk.&nbsp;
+Some humorous reference to the somber reputation of the place was made
+and forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of their business
+affairs until it grew almost dark.&nbsp; The evening was oppressively
+warm, the air stagnant.<br>
+<br>
+Presently both men started from their seats in surprise: a long vine
+that covered half the front of the house and dangled its branches from
+the edge of the porch above them was visibly and audibly agitated, shaking
+violently in every stem and leaf.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;We shall have a storm,&rdquo; Hyatt exclaimed.<br>
+<br>
+Gruber said nothing, but silently directed the other&rsquo;s attention
+to the foliage of adjacent trees, which showed no movement; even the
+delicate tips of the boughs silhouetted against the clear sky were motionless.&nbsp;
+They hastily passed down the steps to what had been a lawn and looked
+upward at the vine, whose entire length was now visible.&nbsp; It continued
+in violent agitation, yet they could discern no disturbing cause.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Let us leave,&rdquo; said the minister.<br>
+<br>
+And leave they did.&nbsp; Forgetting that they had been traveling in
+opposite directions, they rode away together.&nbsp; They went to Norton,
+where they related their strange experience to several discreet friends.&nbsp;
+The next evening, at about the same hour, accompanied by two others
+whose names are not recalled, they were again on the porch of the Harding
+house, and again the mysterious phenomenon occurred: the vine was violently
+agitated while under the closest scrutiny from root to tip, nor did
+their combined strength applied to the trunk serve to still it.&nbsp;
+After an hour&rsquo;s observation they retreated, no less wise, it is
+thought, than when they had come.<br>
+<br>
+No great time was required for these singular facts to rouse the curiosity
+of the entire neighborhood.&nbsp; By day and by night crowds of persons
+assembled at the Harding house &ldquo;seeking a sign.&rdquo;&nbsp; It
+does not appear that any found it, yet so credible were the witnesses
+mentioned that none doubted the reality of the &ldquo;manifestations&rdquo;
+to which they testified.<br>
+<br>
+By either a happy inspiration or some destructive design, it was one
+day proposed - nobody appeared to know from whom the suggestion came
+- to dig up the vine, and after a good deal of debate this was done.&nbsp;
+Nothing was found but the root, yet nothing could have been more strange!<br>
+<br>
+For five or six feet from the trunk, which had at the surface of the
+ground a diameter of several inches, it ran downward, single and straight,
+into a loose, friable earth; then it divided and subdivided into rootlets,
+fibers and filaments, most curiously interwoven.&nbsp; When carefully
+freed from soil they showed a singular formation.&nbsp; In their ramifications
+and doublings back upon themselves they made a compact network, having
+in size and shape an amazing resemblance to the human figure.&nbsp;
+Head, trunk and limbs were there; even the fingers and toes were distinctly
+defined; and many professed to see in the distribution and arrangement
+of the fibers in the globular mass representing the head a grotesque
+suggestion of a face.&nbsp; The figure was horizontal; the smaller roots
+had begun to unite at the breast.<br>
+<br>
+In point of resemblance to the human form this image was imperfect.&nbsp;
+At about ten inches from one of the knees, the <i>cilia </i>forming
+that leg had abruptly doubled backward and inward upon their course
+of growth.&nbsp; The figure lacked the left foot.<br>
+<br>
+There was but one inference - the obvious one; but in the ensuing excitement
+as many courses of action were proposed as there were incapable counselors.&nbsp;
+The matter was settled by the sheriff of the county, who as the lawful
+custodian of the abandoned estate ordered the root replaced and the
+excavation filled with the earth that had been removed.<br>
+<br>
+Later inquiry brought out only one fact of relevancy and significance:
+Mrs. Harding had never visited her relatives in Iowa, nor did they know
+that she was supposed to have done so.<br>
+<br>
+Of Robert Harding and the rest of his family nothing is known.&nbsp;
+The house retains its evil reputation, but the replanted vine is as
+orderly and well-behaved a vegetable as a nervous person could wish
+to sit under of a pleasant night, when the katydids grate out their
+immemorial revelation and the distant whippoorwill signifies his notion
+of what ought to be done about it.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AT OLD MAN ECKERT&rsquo;S<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Philip Eckert lived for many years in an old, weather-stained wooden
+house about three miles from the little town of Marion, in Vermont.&nbsp;
+There must be quite a number of persons living who remember him, not
+unkindly, I trust, and know something of the story that I am about to
+tell.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Old Man Eckert,&rdquo; as he was always called, was not of a
+sociable disposition and lived alone.&nbsp; As he was never known to
+speak of his own affairs nobody thereabout knew anything of his past,
+nor of his relatives if he had any.&nbsp; Without being particularly
+ungracious or repellent in manner or speech, he managed somehow to be
+immune to impertinent curiosity, yet exempt from the evil repute with
+which it commonly revenges itself when baffled; so far as I know, Mr.
+Eckert&rsquo;s renown as a reformed assassin or a retired pirate of
+the Spanish Main had not reached any ear in Marion.&nbsp; He got his
+living cultivating a small and not very fertile farm.<br>
+<br>
+One day he disappeared and a prolonged search by his neighbors failed
+to turn him up or throw any light upon his whereabouts or whyabouts.&nbsp;
+Nothing indicated preparation to leave: all was as he might have left
+it to go to the spring for a bucket of water.&nbsp; For a few weeks
+little else was talked of in that region; then &ldquo;old man Eckert&rdquo;
+became a village tale for the ear of the stranger.&nbsp; I do not know
+what was done regarding his property - the correct legal thing, doubtless.&nbsp;
+The house was standing, still vacant and conspicuously unfit, when I
+last heard of it, some twenty years afterward.<br>
+<br>
+Of course it came to be considered &ldquo;haunted,&rdquo; and the customary
+tales were told of moving lights, dolorous sounds and startling apparitions.&nbsp;
+At one time, about five years after the disappearance, these stories
+of the supernatural became so rife, or through some attesting circumstances
+seemed so important, that some of Marion&rsquo;s most serious citizens
+deemed it well to investigate, and to that end arranged for a night
+session on the premises.&nbsp; The parties to this undertaking were
+John Holcomb, an apothecary; Wilson Merle, a lawyer, and Andrus C. Palmer,
+the teacher of the public school, all men of consequence and repute.&nbsp;
+They were to meet at Holcomb&rsquo;s house at eight o&rsquo;clock in
+the evening of the appointed day and go together to the scene of their
+vigil, where certain arrangements for their comfort, a provision of
+fuel and the like, for the season was winter, had been already made.<br>
+<br>
+Palmer did not keep the engagement, and after waiting a half-hour for
+him the others went to the Eckert house without him.&nbsp; They established
+themselves in the principal room, before a glowing fire, and without
+other light than it gave, awaited events.&nbsp; It had been agreed to
+speak as little as possible: they did not even renew the exchange of
+views regarding the defection of Palmer, which had occupied their minds
+on the way.<br>
+<br>
+Probably an hour had passed without incident when they heard (not without
+emotion, doubtless) the sound of an opening door in the rear of the
+house, followed by footfalls in the room adjoining that in which they
+sat.&nbsp; The watchers rose to their feet, but stood firm, prepared
+for whatever might ensue.&nbsp; A long silence followed - how long neither
+would afterward undertake to say.&nbsp; Then the door between the two
+rooms opened and a man entered.<br>
+<br>
+It was Palmer.&nbsp; He was pale, as if from excitement - as pale as
+the others felt themselves to be.&nbsp; His manner, too, was singularly
+distrait: he neither responded to their salutations nor so much as looked
+at them, but walked slowly across the room in the light of the failing
+fire and opening the front door passed out into the darkness.<br>
+<br>
+It seems to have been the first thought of both men that Palmer was
+suffering from fright - that something seen, heard or imagined in the
+back room had deprived him of his senses.&nbsp; Acting on the same friendly
+impulse both ran after him through the open door.&nbsp; But neither
+they nor anyone ever again saw or heard of Andrus Palmer!<br>
+<br>
+This much was ascertained the next morning.&nbsp; During the session
+of Messrs. Holcomb and Merle at the &ldquo;haunted house&rdquo; a new
+snow had fallen to a depth of several inches upon the old.&nbsp; In
+this snow Palmer&rsquo;s trail from his lodging in the village to the
+back door of the Eckert house was conspicuous.&nbsp; But there it ended:
+from the front door nothing led away but the tracks of the two men who
+swore that he preceded them.&nbsp; Palmer&rsquo;s disappearance was
+as complete as that of &ldquo;old man Eckert&rdquo; himself - whom,
+indeed, the editor of the local paper somewhat graphically accused of
+having &ldquo;reached out and pulled him in.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE SPOOK HOUSE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+On the road leading north from Manchester, in eastern Kentucky, to Booneville,
+twenty miles away, stood, in 1862, a wooden plantation house of a somewhat
+better quality than most of the dwellings in that region.&nbsp; The
+house was destroyed by fire in the year following - probably by some
+stragglers from the retreating column of General George W. Morgan, when
+he was driven from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio river by General Kirby
+Smith.&nbsp; At the time of its destruction, it had for four or five
+years been vacant.&nbsp; The fields about it were overgrown with brambles,
+the fences gone, even the few negro quarters, and out-houses generally,
+fallen partly into ruin by neglect and pillage; for the negroes and
+poor whites of the vicinity found in the building and fences an abundant
+supply of fuel, of which they availed themselves without hesitation,
+openly and by daylight.&nbsp; By daylight alone; after nightfall no
+human being except passing strangers ever went near the place.<br>
+<br>
+It was known as the &ldquo;Spook House.&rdquo;&nbsp; That it was tenanted
+by evil spirits, visible, audible and active, no one in all that region
+doubted any more than he doubted what he was told of Sundays by the
+traveling preacher.&nbsp; Its owner&rsquo;s opinion of the matter was
+unknown; he and his family had disappeared one night and no trace of
+them had ever been found.&nbsp; They left everything - household goods,
+clothing, provisions, the horses in the stable, the cows in the field,
+the negroes in the quarters - all as it stood; nothing was missing -
+except a man, a woman, three girls, a boy and a babe!&nbsp; It was not
+altogether surprising that a plantation where seven human beings could
+be simultaneously effaced and nobody the wiser should be under some
+suspicion.<br>
+<br>
+One night in June, 1859, two citizens of Frankfort, Col. J. C. McArdle,
+a lawyer, and Judge Myron Veigh, of the State Militia, were driving
+from Booneville to Manchester.&nbsp; Their business was so important
+that they decided to push on, despite the darkness and the mutterings
+of an approaching storm, which eventually broke upon them just as they
+arrived opposite the &ldquo;Spook House.&rdquo;&nbsp; The lightning
+was so incessant that they easily found their way through the gateway
+and into a shed, where they hitched and unharnessed their team.&nbsp;
+They then went to the house, through the rain, and knocked at all the
+doors without getting any response.&nbsp; Attributing this to the continuous
+uproar of the thunder they pushed at one of the doors, which yielded.&nbsp;
+They entered without further ceremony and closed the door.&nbsp; That
+instant they were in darkness and silence.&nbsp; Not a gleam of the
+lightning&rsquo;s unceasing blaze penetrated the windows or crevices;
+not a whisper of the awful tumult without reached them there.&nbsp;
+It was as if they had suddenly been stricken blind and deaf, and McArdle
+afterward said that for a moment he believed himself to have been killed
+by a stroke of lightning as he crossed the threshold.&nbsp; The rest
+of this adventure can as well be related in his own words, from the
+Frankfort <i>Advocate </i>of August 6, 1876:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;When I had somewhat recovered from the dazing effect of the transition
+from uproar to silence, my first impulse was to reopen the door which
+I had closed, and from the knob of which I was not conscious of having
+removed my hand; I felt it distinctly, still in the clasp of my fingers.&nbsp;
+My notion was to ascertain by stepping again into the storm whether
+I had been deprived of sight and hearing.&nbsp; I turned the doorknob
+and pulled open the door.&nbsp; It led into another room!<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish light, the
+source of which I could not determine, making everything distinctly
+visible, though nothing was sharply defined.&nbsp; Everything, I say,
+but in truth the only objects within the blank stone walls of that room
+were human corpses.&nbsp; In number they were perhaps eight or ten -
+it may well be understood that I did not truly count them.&nbsp; They
+were of different ages, or rather sizes, from infancy up, and of both
+sexes.&nbsp; All were prostrate on the floor, excepting one, apparently
+a young woman, who sat up, her back supported by an angle of the wall.&nbsp;
+A babe was clasped in the arms of another and older woman.&nbsp; A half-grown
+lad lay face downward across the legs of a full-bearded man.&nbsp; One
+or two were nearly naked, and the hand of a young girl held the fragment
+of a gown which she had torn open at the breast.&nbsp; The bodies were
+in various stages of decay, all greatly shrunken in face and figure.&nbsp;
+Some were but little more than skeletons.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle
+and still holding open the door, by some unaccountable perversity my
+attention was diverted from the shocking scene and concerned itself
+with trifles and details.&nbsp; Perhaps my mind, with an instinct of
+self-preservation, sought relief in matters which would relax its dangerous
+tension.&nbsp; Among other things, I observed that the door that I was
+holding open was of heavy iron plates, riveted.&nbsp; Equidistant from
+one another and from the top and bottom, three strong bolts protruded
+from the beveled edge.&nbsp; I turned the knob and they were retracted
+flush with the edge; released it, and they shot out.&nbsp; It was a
+spring lock.&nbsp; On the inside there was no knob, nor any kind of
+projection - a smooth surface of iron.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;While noting these things with an interest and attention which
+it now astonishes me to recall I felt myself thrust aside, and Judge
+Veigh, whom in the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings I had altogether
+forgotten, pushed by me into the room.&nbsp; &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s
+sake,&rsquo; I cried, &lsquo;do not go in there!&nbsp; Let us get out
+of this dreadful place!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;He gave no heed to my entreaties, but (as fearless a gentleman
+as lived in all the South) walked quickly to the center of the room,
+knelt beside one of the bodies for a closer examination and tenderly
+raised its blackened and shriveled head in his hands.&nbsp; A strong
+disagreeable odor came through the doorway, completely overpowering
+me.&nbsp; My senses reeled; I felt myself falling, and in clutching
+at the edge of the door for support pushed it shut with a sharp click!<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I remember no more: six weeks later I recovered my reason in
+a hotel at Manchester, whither I had been taken by strangers the next
+day.&nbsp; For all these weeks I had suffered from a nervous fever,
+attended with constant delirium.&nbsp; I had been found lying in the
+road several miles away from the house; but how I had escaped from it
+to get there I never knew.&nbsp; On recovery, or as soon as my physicians
+permitted me to talk, I inquired the fate of Judge Veigh, whom (to quiet
+me, as I now know) they represented as well and at home.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;No one believed a word of my story, and who can wonder?&nbsp;
+And who can imagine my grief when, arriving at my home in Frankfort
+two months later, I learned that Judge Veigh had never been heard of
+since that night?&nbsp; I then regretted bitterly the pride which since
+the first few days after the recovery of my reason had forbidden me
+to repeat my discredited story and insist upon its truth.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;With all that afterward occurred - the examination of the house;
+the failure to find any room corresponding to that which I have described;
+the attempt to have me adjudged insane, and my triumph over my accusers
+- the readers of the <i>Advocate </i>are familiar.&nbsp; After all these
+years I am still confident that excavations which I have neither the
+legal right to undertake nor the wealth to make would disclose the secret
+of the disappearance of my unhappy friend, and possibly of the former
+occupants and owners of the deserted and now destroyed house.&nbsp;
+I do not despair of yet bringing about such a search, and it is a source
+of deep grief to me that it has been delayed by the undeserved hostility
+and unwise incredulity of the family and friends of the late Judge Veigh.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Colonel McArdle died in Frankfort on the thirteenth day of December,
+in the year 1879.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE OTHER LODGERS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;In order to take that train,&rdquo; said Colonel Levering, sitting
+in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, &ldquo;you will have to remain nearly
+all night in Atlanta.&nbsp; That is a fine city, but I advise you not
+to put up at the Breathitt House, one of the principal hotels.&nbsp;
+It is an old wooden building in urgent need of repairs.&nbsp; There
+are breaches in the walls that you could throw a cat through.&nbsp;
+The bedrooms have no locks on the doors, no furniture but a single chair
+in each, and a bedstead without bedding - just a mattress.&nbsp; Even
+these meager accommodations you cannot be sure that you will have in
+monopoly; you must take your chance of being stowed in with a lot of
+others.&nbsp; Sir, it is a most abominable hotel.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The night that I passed in it was an uncomfortable night.&nbsp;
+I got in late and was shown to my room on the ground floor by an apologetic
+night-clerk with a tallow candle, which he considerately left with me.&nbsp;
+I was worn out by two days and a night of hard railway travel and had
+not entirely recovered from a gunshot wound in the head, received in
+an altercation.&nbsp; Rather than look for better quarters I lay down
+on the mattress without removing my clothing and fell asleep.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Along toward morning I awoke.&nbsp; The moon had risen and was
+shining in at the uncurtained window, illuminating the room with a soft,
+bluish light which seemed, somehow, a bit spooky, though I dare say
+it had no uncommon quality; all moonlight is that way if you will observe
+it.&nbsp; Imagine my surprise and indignation when I saw the floor occupied
+by at least a dozen other lodgers!&nbsp; I sat up, earnestly damning
+the management of that unthinkable hotel, and was about to spring from
+the bed to go and make trouble for the night-clerk - him of the apologetic
+manner and the tallow candle - when something in the situation affected
+me with a strange indisposition to move.&nbsp; I suppose I was what
+a story-writer might call &lsquo;frozen with terror.&rsquo;&nbsp; For
+those men were obviously all dead!<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;They lay on their backs, disposed orderly along three sides of
+the room, their feet to the walls - against the other wall, farthest
+from the door, stood my bed and the chair.&nbsp; All the faces were
+covered, but under their white cloths the features of the two bodies
+that lay in the square patch of moonlight near the window showed in
+sharp profile as to nose and chin.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I thought this a bad dream and tried to cry out, as one does
+in a nightmare, but could make no sound.&nbsp; At last, with a desperate
+effort I threw my feet to the floor and passing between the two rows
+of clouted faces and the two bodies that lay nearest the door, I escaped
+from the infernal place and ran to the office.&nbsp; The night-clerk
+was there, behind the desk, sitting in the dim light of another tallow
+candle - just sitting and staring.&nbsp; He did not rise: my abrupt
+entrance produced no effect upon him, though I must have looked a veritable
+corpse myself.&nbsp; It occurred to me then that I had not before really
+observed the fellow.&nbsp; He was a little chap, with a colorless face
+and the whitest, blankest eyes I ever saw.&nbsp; He had no more expression
+than the back of my hand.&nbsp; His clothing was a dirty gray.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Damn you!&rsquo; I said; &lsquo;what do you mean?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Just the same, I was shaking like a leaf in the wind and did
+not recognize my own voice.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;The night-clerk rose, bowed (apologetically) and - well, he was
+no longer there, and at that moment I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder
+from behind.&nbsp; Just fancy that if you can!&nbsp; Unspeakably frightened,
+I turned and saw a portly, kind-faced gentleman, who asked:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;What is the matter, my friend?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I was not long in telling him, but before I made an end of it
+he went pale himself.&nbsp; &lsquo;See here,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;are
+you telling the truth?&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;I had now got myself in hand and terror had given place to indignation.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If you dare to doubt it,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll hammer
+the life out of you!&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;No,&rsquo; he replied, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t do that; just
+sit down till I tell you.&nbsp; This is not a hotel.&nbsp; It used to
+be; afterward it was a hospital.&nbsp; Now it is unoccupied, awaiting
+a tenant.&nbsp; The room that you mention was the dead-room - there
+were always plenty of dead.&nbsp; The fellow that you call the night-clerk
+used to be that, but later he booked the patients as they were brought
+in.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t understand his being here.&nbsp; He has been
+dead a few weeks.&rsquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;And who are you?&rsquo; I blurted out.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Oh, I look after the premises.&nbsp; I happened to be
+passing just now, and seeing a light in here came in to investigate.&nbsp;
+Let us have a look into that room,&rsquo; he added, lifting the sputtering
+candle from the desk.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll see you at the devil first!&rsquo; said I,
+bolting out of the door into the street.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Sir, that Breathitt House, in Atlanta, is a beastly place!&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t you stop there.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;God forbid!&nbsp; Your account of it certainly does not suggest
+comfort.&nbsp; By the way, Colonel, when did all that occur?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;In September, 1864 - shortly after the siege.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE THING AT NOLAN<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+To the south of where the road between Leesville and Hardy, in the State
+of Missouri, crosses the east fork of May Creek stands an abandoned
+house.&nbsp; Nobody has lived in it since the summer of 1879, and it
+is fast going to pieces.&nbsp; For some three years before the date
+mentioned above, it was occupied by the family of Charles May, from
+one of whose ancestors the creek near which it stands took its name.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. May&rsquo;s family consisted of a wife, an adult son and two young
+girls.&nbsp; The son&rsquo;s name was John - the names of the daughters
+are unknown to the writer of this sketch.<br>
+<br>
+John May was of a morose and surly disposition, not easily moved to
+anger, but having an uncommon gift of sullen, implacable hate.&nbsp;
+His father was quite otherwise; of a sunny, jovial disposition, but
+with a quick temper like a sudden flame kindled in a wisp of straw,
+which consumes it in a flash and is no more.&nbsp; He cherished no resentments,
+and his anger gone, was quick to make overtures for reconciliation.&nbsp;
+He had a brother living near by who was unlike him in respect of all
+this, and it was a current witticism in the neighborhood that John had
+inherited his disposition from his uncle.<br>
+<br>
+One day a misunderstanding arose between father and son, harsh words
+ensued, and the father struck the son full in the face with his fist.&nbsp;
+John quietly wiped away the blood that followed the blow, fixed his
+eyes upon the already penitent offender and said with cold composure,
+&ldquo;You will die for that.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The words were overheard by two brothers named Jackson, who were approaching
+the men at the moment; but seeing them engaged in a quarrel they retired,
+apparently unobserved.&nbsp; Charles May afterward related the unfortunate
+occurrence to his wife and explained that he had apologized to the son
+for the hasty blow, but without avail; the young man not only rejected
+his overtures, but refused to withdraw his terrible threat.&nbsp; Nevertheless,
+there was no open rupture of relations: John continued living with the
+family, and things went on very much as before.<br>
+<br>
+One Sunday morning in June, 1879, about two weeks after what has been
+related, May senior left the house immediately after breakfast, taking
+a spade.&nbsp; He said he was going to make an excavation at a certain
+spring in a wood about a mile away, so that the cattle could obtain
+water.&nbsp; John remained in the house for some hours, variously occupied
+in shaving himself, writing letters and reading a newspaper.&nbsp; His
+manner was very nearly what it usually was; perhaps he was a trifle
+more sullen and surly.<br>
+<br>
+At two o&rsquo;clock he left the house.&nbsp; At five, he returned.&nbsp;
+For some reason not connected with any interest in his movements, and
+which is not now recalled, the time of his departure and that of his
+return were noted by his mother and sisters, as was attested at his
+trial for murder.&nbsp; It was observed that his clothing was wet in
+spots, as if (so the prosecution afterward pointed out) he had been
+removing blood-stains from it.&nbsp; His manner was strange, his look
+wild.&nbsp; He complained of illness, and going to his room took to
+his bed.<br>
+<br>
+May senior did not return.&nbsp; Later that evening the nearest neighbors
+were aroused, and during that night and the following day a search was
+prosecuted through the wood where the spring was.&nbsp; It resulted
+in little but the discovery of both men&rsquo;s footprints in the clay
+about the spring.&nbsp; John May in the meantime had grown rapidly worse
+with what the local physician called brain fever, and in his delirium
+raved of murder, but did not say whom he conceived to have been murdered,
+nor whom he imagined to have done the deed.&nbsp; But his threat was
+recalled by the brothers Jackson and he was arrested on suspicion and
+a deputy sheriff put in charge of him at his home.&nbsp; Public opinion
+ran strongly against him and but for his illness he would probably have
+been hanged by a mob.&nbsp; As it was, a meeting of the neighbors was
+held on Tuesday and a committee appointed to watch the case and take
+such action at any time as circumstances might seem to warrant.<br>
+<br>
+On Wednesday all was changed.&nbsp; From the town of Nolan, eight miles
+away, came a story which put a quite different light on the matter.&nbsp;
+Nolan consisted of a school house, a blacksmith&rsquo;s shop, a &ldquo;store&rdquo;
+and a half-dozen dwellings.&nbsp; The store was kept by one Henry Odell,
+a cousin of the elder May.&nbsp; On the afternoon of the Sunday of May&rsquo;s
+disappearance Mr. Odell and four of his neighbors, men of credibility,
+were sitting in the store smoking and talking.&nbsp; It was a warm day;
+and both the front and the back door were open.&nbsp; At about three
+o&rsquo;clock Charles May, who was well known to three of them, entered
+at the front door and passed out at the rear.&nbsp; He was without hat
+or coat.&nbsp; He did not look at them, nor return their greeting, a
+circumstance which did not surprise, for he was evidently seriously
+hurt.&nbsp; Above the left eyebrow was a wound - a deep gash from which
+the blood flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck
+and saturating his light-gray shirt.&nbsp; Oddly enough, the thought
+uppermost in the minds of all was that he had been fighting and was
+going to the brook directly at the back of the store, to wash himself.<br>
+<br>
+Perhaps there was a feeling of delicacy - a backwoods etiquette which
+restrained them from following him to offer assistance; the court records,
+from which, mainly, this narrative is drawn, are silent as to anything
+but the fact.&nbsp; They waited for him to return, but he did not return.<br>
+<br>
+Bordering the brook behind the store is a forest extending for six miles
+back to the Medicine Lodge Hills.&nbsp; As soon as it became known in
+the neighborhood of the missing man&rsquo;s dwelling that he had been
+seen in Nolan there was a marked alteration in public sentiment and
+feeling.&nbsp; The vigilance committee went out of existence without
+the formality of a resolution.&nbsp; Search along the wooded bottom
+lands of May Creek was stopped and nearly the entire male population
+of the region took to beating the bush about Nolan and in the Medicine
+Lodge Hills.&nbsp; But of the missing man no trace was found.<br>
+<br>
+One of the strangest circumstances of this strange case is the formal
+indictment and trial of a man for murder of one whose body no human
+being professed to have seen - one not known to be dead.&nbsp; We are
+all more or less familiar with the vagaries and eccentricities of frontier
+law, but this instance, it is thought, is unique.&nbsp; However that
+may be, it is of record that on recovering from his illness John May
+was indicted for the murder of his missing father.&nbsp; Counsel for
+the defense appears not to have demurred and the case was tried on its
+merits.&nbsp; The prosecution was spiritless and perfunctory; the defense
+easily established - with regard to the deceased - an <i>alibi</i>.&nbsp;
+If during the time in which John May must have killed Charles May, if
+he killed him at all, Charles May was miles away from where John May
+must have been, it is plain that the deceased must have come to his
+death at the hands of someone else.<br>
+<br>
+John May was acquitted, immediately left the country, and has never
+been heard of from that day.&nbsp; Shortly afterward his mother and
+sisters removed to St. Louis.&nbsp; The farm having passed into the
+possession of a man who owns the land adjoining, and has a dwelling
+of his own, the May house has ever since been vacant, and has the somber
+reputation of being haunted.<br>
+<br>
+One day after the May family had left the country, some boys, playing
+in the woods along May Creek, found concealed under a mass of dead leaves,
+but partly exposed by the rooting of hogs, a spade, nearly new and bright,
+except for a spot on one edge, which was rusted and stained with blood.&nbsp;
+The implement had the initials C. M. cut into the handle.<br>
+<br>
+This discovery renewed, in some degree, the public excitement of a few
+months before.&nbsp; The earth near the spot where the spade was found
+was carefully examined, and the result was the finding of the dead body
+of a man.&nbsp; It had been buried under two or three feet of soil and
+the spot covered with a layer of dead leaves and twigs.&nbsp; There
+was but little decomposition, a fact attributed to some preservative
+property in the mineral-bearing soil.<br>
+<br>
+Above the left eyebrow was a wound - a deep gash from which blood had
+flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and saturating
+the light-gray shirt.&nbsp; The skull had been cut through by the blow.&nbsp;
+The body was that of Charles May.<br>
+<br>
+But what was it that passed through Mr. Odell&rsquo;s store at Nolan?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+One morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six miles
+from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on the veranda
+of his dwelling.&nbsp; Immediately in front of the house was a lawn,
+perhaps fifty yards in extent between the house and public road, or,
+as it was called, the &ldquo;pike.&rdquo;&nbsp; Beyond this road lay
+a close-cropped pasture of some ten acres, level and without a tree,
+rock, or any natural or artificial object on its surface.&nbsp; At the
+time there was not even a domestic animal in the field.&nbsp; In another
+field, beyond the pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an overseer.<br>
+<br>
+Throwing away the stump of a cigar, the planter rose, saying: &ldquo;I
+forgot to tell Andrew about those horses.&rdquo;&nbsp; Andrew was the
+overseer.<br>
+<br>
+Williamson strolled leisurely down the gravel walk, plucking a flower
+as he went, passed across the road and into the pasture, pausing a moment
+as he closed the gate leading into it, to greet a passing neighbor,
+Armour Wren, who lived on an adjoining plantation.&nbsp; Mr. Wren was
+in an open carriage with his son James, a lad of thirteen.&nbsp; When
+he had driven some two hundred yards from the point of meeting, Mr.
+Wren said to his son: &ldquo;I forgot to tell Mr. Williamson about those
+horses.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Wren had sold to Mr. Williamson some horses, which were to have
+been sent for that day, but for some reason not now remembered it would
+be inconvenient to deliver them until the morrow.&nbsp; The coachman
+was directed to drive back, and as the vehicle turned Williamson was
+seen by all three, walking leisurely across the pasture.&nbsp; At that
+moment one of the coach horses stumbled and came near falling.&nbsp;
+It had no more than fairly recovered itself when James Wren cried: &ldquo;Why,
+father, what has become of Mr. Williamson?&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+It is not the purpose of this narrative to answer that question.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Wren&rsquo;s strange account of the matter, given under oath in
+the course of legal proceedings relating to the Williamson estate, here
+follows:<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;My son&rsquo;s exclamation caused me to look toward the spot
+where I had seen the deceased <i>[sic] </i>an instant before, but he
+was not there, nor was he anywhere visible.&nbsp; I cannot say that
+at the moment I was greatly startled, or realized the gravity of the
+occurrence, though I thought it singular.&nbsp; My son, however, was
+greatly astonished and kept repeating his question in different forms
+until we arrived at the gate.&nbsp; My black boy Sam was similarly affected,
+even in a greater degree, but I reckon more by my son&rsquo;s manner
+than by anything he had himself observed.&nbsp; [This sentence in the
+testimony was stricken out.]&nbsp; As we got out of the carriage at
+the gate of the field, and while Sam was hanging <i>[sic] </i>the team
+to the fence, Mrs. Williamson, with her child in her arms and followed
+by several servants, came running down the walk in great excitement,
+crying: &lsquo;He is gone, he is gone!&nbsp; O God! what an awful thing!&rsquo;
+and many other such exclamations, which I do not distinctly recollect.&nbsp;
+I got from them the impression that they related to something more -
+than the mere disappearance of her husband, even if that had occurred
+before her eyes.&nbsp; Her manner was wild, but not more so, I think,
+than was natural under the circumstances.&nbsp; I have no reason to
+think she had at that time lost her mind.&nbsp; I have never since seen
+nor heard of Mr. Williamson.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+This testimony, as might have been expected, was corroborated in almost
+every particular by the only other eye-witness (if that is a proper
+term) - the lad James.&nbsp; Mrs. Williamson had lost her reason and
+the servants were, of course, not competent to testify.&nbsp; The boy
+James Wren had declared at first that he <i>saw </i>the disappearance,
+but there is nothing of this in his testimony given in court.&nbsp;
+None of the field hands working in the field to which Williamson was
+going had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire
+plantation and adjoining country failed to supply a clew.&nbsp; The
+most monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks,
+were current in that part of the State for many years, and probably
+are to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly
+known of the matter.&nbsp; The courts decided that Williamson was dead,
+and his estate was distributed according to law.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AN UNFINISHED RACE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+James Burne Worson was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington, Warwickshire,
+England.&nbsp; He had a little shop in one of the by-ways leading off
+the road to Warwick.&nbsp; In his humble sphere he was esteemed an honest
+man, although like many of his class in English towns he was somewhat
+addicted to drink.&nbsp; When in liquor he would make foolish wagers.&nbsp;
+On one of these too frequent occasions he was boasting of his prowess
+as a pedestrian and athlete, and the outcome was a match against nature.&nbsp;
+For a stake of one sovereign he undertook to run all the way to Coventry
+and back, a distance of something more than forty miles.&nbsp; This
+was on the 3d day of September in 1873.&nbsp; He set out at once, the
+man with whom he had made the bet - whose name is not remembered - accompanied
+by Barham Wise, a linen draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer,
+I think, following in a light cart or wagon.<br>
+<br>
+For several miles Worson went on very well, at an easy gait, without
+apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was
+not sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them.&nbsp; The three men in
+the wagon kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly
+&ldquo;chaff&rdquo; or encouragement, as the spirit moved them.&nbsp;
+Suddenly - in the very middle of the roadway, not a dozen yards from
+them, and with their eyes full upon him - the man seemed to stumble,
+pitched headlong forward, uttered a terrible cry and vanished!&nbsp;
+He did not fall to the earth - he vanished before touching it.&nbsp;
+No trace of him was ever discovered.<br>
+<br>
+After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless irresolution,
+the three men returned to Leamington, told their astonishing story and
+were afterward taken into custody.&nbsp; But they were of good standing,
+had always been considered truthful, were sober at the time of the occurrence,
+and nothing ever transpired to discredit their sworn account of their
+extraordinary adventure, concerning the truth of which, nevertheless,
+public opinion was divided, throughout the United Kingdom.&nbsp; If
+they had something to conceal, their choice of means is certainly one
+of the most amazing ever made by sane human beings.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHARLES ASHMORE&rsquo;S TRAIL<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The family of Christian Ashmore consisted of his wife, his mother, two
+grown daughters, and a son of sixteen years.&nbsp; They lived in Troy,
+New York, were well-to-do, respectable persons, and had many friends,
+some of whom, reading these lines, will doubtless learn for the first
+time the extraordinary fate of the young man.&nbsp; From Troy the Ashmores
+moved in 1871 or 1872 to Richmond, Indiana, and a year or two later
+to the vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, where Mr. Ashmore bought a farm
+and lived on it.&nbsp; At some little distance from the farmhouse was
+a spring with a constant flow of clear, cold water, whence the family
+derived its supply for domestic use at all seasons.<br>
+<br>
+On the evening of the 9th of November in 1878, at about nine o&rsquo;clock,
+young Charles Ashmore left the family circle about the hearth, took
+a tin bucket and started toward the spring.&nbsp; As he did not return,
+the family became uneasy, and going to the door by which he had left
+the house, his father called without receiving an answer.&nbsp; He then
+lighted a lantern and with the eldest daughter, Martha, who insisted
+on accompanying him, went in search.&nbsp; A light snow had fallen,
+obliterating the path, but making the young man&rsquo;s trail conspicuous;
+each footprint was plainly defined.&nbsp; After going a little more
+than half-way - perhaps seventy-five yards - the father, who was in
+advance, halted, and elevating his lantern stood peering intently into
+the darkness ahead.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;What is the matter, father?&rdquo; the girl asked.<br>
+<br>
+This was the matter: the trail of the young man had abruptly ended,
+and all beyond was smooth, unbroken snow.&nbsp; The last footprints
+were as conspicuous as any in the line; the very nail-marks were distinctly
+visible.&nbsp; Mr. Ashmore looked upward, shading his eyes with his
+hat held between them and the lantern.&nbsp; The stars were shining;
+there was not a cloud in the sky; he was denied the explanation which
+had suggested itself, doubtful as it would have been - a new snowfall
+with a limit so plainly defined.&nbsp; Taking a wide circuit round the
+ultimate tracks, so as to leave them undisturbed for further examination,
+the man proceeded to the spring, the girl following, weak and terrified.&nbsp;
+Neither had spoken a word of what both had observed.&nbsp; The spring
+was covered with ice, hours old.<br>
+<br>
+Returning to the house they noted the appearance of the snow on both
+sides of the trail its entire length.&nbsp; No tracks led away from
+it.<br>
+<br>
+The morning light showed nothing more.&nbsp; Smooth, spotless, unbroken,
+the shallow snow lay everywhere.<br>
+<br>
+Four days later the grief-stricken mother herself went to the spring
+for water.&nbsp; She came back and related that in passing the spot
+where the footprints had ended she had heard the voice of her son and
+had been eagerly calling to him, wandering about the place, as she had
+fancied the voice to be now in one direction, now in another, until
+she was exhausted with fatigue and emotion.<br>
+<br>
+Questioned as to what the voice had said, she was unable to tell, yet
+averred that the words were perfectly distinct.&nbsp; In a moment the
+entire family was at the place, but nothing was heard, and the voice
+was believed to be an hallucination caused by the mother&rsquo;s great
+anxiety and her disordered nerves.&nbsp; But for months afterward, at
+irregular intervals of a few days, the voice was heard by the several
+members of the family, and by others.&nbsp; All declared it unmistakably
+the voice of Charles Ashmore; all agreed that it seemed to come from
+a great distance, faintly, yet with entire distinctness of articulation;
+yet none could determine its direction, nor repeat its words.&nbsp;
+The intervals of silence grew longer and longer, the voice fainter and
+farther, and by midsummer it was heard no more.<br>
+<br>
+If anybody knows the fate of Charles Ashmore it is probably his mother.&nbsp;
+She is dead.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+SCIENCE TO THE FRONT<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In connection with this subject of &ldquo;mysterious disappearance&rdquo;
+- of which every memory is stored with abundant example - it is pertinent
+to note the belief of Dr. Hem, of Leipsic; not by way of explanation,
+unless the reader may choose to take it so, but because of its intrinsic
+interest as a singular speculation.&nbsp; This distinguished scientist
+has expounded his views in a book entitled &ldquo;Verschwinden und Seine
+Theorie,&rdquo; which has attracted some attention, &ldquo;particularly,&rdquo;
+says one writer, &ldquo;among the followers of Hegel, and mathematicians
+who hold to the actual existence of a so-called non-Euclidean space
+- that is to say, of space which has more dimensions than length, breadth,
+and thickness - space in which it would be possible to tie a knot in
+an endless cord and to turn a rubber ball inside out without &lsquo;a
+solution of its continuity,&rsquo; or in other words, without breaking
+or cracking it.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Dr. Hem believes that in the visible world there are void places - <i>vacua</i>,
+and something more - holes, as it were, through which animate and inanimate
+objects may fall into the invisible world and be seen and heard no more.&nbsp;
+The theory is something like this: Space is pervaded by luminiferous
+ether, which is a material thing - as much a substance as air or water,
+though almost infinitely more attenuated.&nbsp; All force, all forms
+of energy must be propagated in this; every process must take place
+in it which takes place at all.&nbsp; But let us suppose that cavities
+exist in this otherwise universal medium, as caverns exist in the earth,
+or cells in a Swiss cheese.&nbsp; In such a cavity there would be absolutely
+nothing.&nbsp; It would be such a vacuum as cannot be artificially produced;
+for if we pump the air from a receiver there remains the luminiferous
+ether.&nbsp; Through one of these cavities light could not pass, for
+there would be nothing to bear it.&nbsp; Sound could not come from it;
+nothing could be felt in it.&nbsp; It would not have a single one of
+the conditions necessary to the action of any of our senses.&nbsp; In
+such a void, in short, nothing whatever could occur.&nbsp; Now, in the
+words of the writer before quoted - the learned doctor himself nowhere
+puts it so concisely: &ldquo;A man inclosed in such a closet could neither
+see nor be seen; neither hear nor be heard; neither feel nor be felt;
+neither live nor die, for both life and death are processes which can
+take place only where there is force, and in empty space no force could
+exist.&rdquo;&nbsp; Are these the awful conditions (some will ask) under
+which the friends of the lost are to think of them as existing, and
+doomed forever to exist?<br>
+<br>
+Baldly and imperfectly as here stated, Dr. Hem&rsquo;s theory, in so
+far as it professes to be an adequate explanation of &ldquo;mysterious
+disappearances,&rdquo; is open to many obvious objections; to fewer
+as he states it himself in the &ldquo;spacious volubility&rdquo; of
+his book.&nbsp; But even as expounded by its author it does not explain,
+and in truth is incompatible with some incidents of, the occurrences
+related in these memoranda: for example, the sound of Charles Ashmore&rsquo;s
+voice.&nbsp; It is not my duty to indue facts and theories with affinity.<br>
+<br>
+A.B.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Footnotes:<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a>&nbsp; The Isle
+of Pines was once a famous rendezvous of pirates.<br>
+<br>
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories<br>
+by Ambrose Bierce<br>
+</body>
+</html>
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