The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK ® - Sarah Orne Jewett

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him with a kind of dull surprise as if the question were foolish.

      “Why, ye made ’em yerself, comin’ up, didn’t ye?”

      “I mean those larger tracks—they were made by a much heavier car than mine.”

      “Oh,” said the old man, nodding, “them was made by a big machine that come in here las’ week. You see this house’s bin shet up ’bout ten years, ever sence ol’ Jedge Gordon died. B’longs to Miss Jean—her that run off with the Eye-talyin. She kinder wants to sell it, and kinder not—ye see—”

      “Yes,” interrupted Carmichael, “but about that big machine—when did you say it was here?”

      “P’raps four or five days ago; I think it was a We’nsday. Two fellers from Philadelfy—said they wanted to look at the house, tho’t of buyin’ it. So I bro’t ’em in, but when they seen the outside of it they said they didn’t want to look at it no more—too big and too crumbly!”

      “And since then no one has been here?”

      “Not a soul—leastways nobody that I seen. I don’t s’pose you think o’ buyin’ the house, doc’! It’s too lonely for an office, ain’t it?”

      “You’re right, Scudder, much too lonely. But I’d like to look through the old place, if you will take me in.”

      The hall, with the two chairs and the table, on which a kitchen lamp with a half-inch of oil in it was standing, gave no sign of recent habitation. Carmichael glanced around him and hurried up the stairway to the bedroom. A tall four-poster stood in one corner, with a coverlet apparently hiding a mattress and some pillows. A dressing-table stood against the wall, and in the middle of the floor there were a few chairs. A half-open closet door showed a pile of yellow linen. The daylight sifted dimly into the room through the cracks of the shutters.

      “Scudder,” said Carmichael, “I want you to look around carefully and tell me whether you see any signs of any one having been here lately.”

      The old man stared, and turned his eyes slowly about the room. Then he shook his head.

      “Can’t say as I do. Looks pretty much as it did when me and my wife breshed it up in October. Ye see it’s kinder clean fer an old house—not much dust from the road here. That linen and that bed’s bin here sence I c’n remember. Them burnt logs mus’ be left over from old Jedge Gordon’s time. He died in here. But what’s the matter, doc’? Ye think tramps or burglers—”

      “No,” said Carmichael, “but what would you say if I told you that I was called here last night to see a patient, and that the patient was the Miss Jean Gordon of whom you have just told me?”

      “What d’ye mean?” said the old man, gaping. Then he gazed at the doctor pityingly, and shook his head. “I know ye ain’t a drinkin’ man, doc’, so I wouldn’t say nothin’. But I guess ye bin dreamin’. Why, las’ time Miss Jean writ to me—her name’s Mortimer now, and her husband’s a kinder Barrin or some sorter furrin noble,—she was in Paris, not mor’n two weeks ago! Said she was dyin’ to come back to the ol’ place agin, but she wa’n’t none too well, and didn’t guess she c’d manage it. Ef ye said ye seen her here las’ night—why—well, I’d jest think ye’d bin dreamin’. P’raps ye’re a little under the weather—bin workin’ too hard?”

      “I never was better, Scudder, but sometimes curious notions come to me. I wanted to see how you would take this one. Now we’ll go downstairs again.”

      The old man laughed, but doubtfully, as if he was still puzzled by the talk, and they descended the creaking, dusty stairs. Carmichael turned at once into the dining-room.

      The rubbish was still in the fireplace, the chairs ranged along the wall. There were no dishes on the long table; but at the head of it two chairs; and at the foot, one; and in front of that, lying on the table, a folded bit of paper. Carmichael picked it up and opened it.

      It was his prescription for the nitrite of amyl.

      He hesitated a moment; then refolded the paper and put it in his vest-pocket.

      Seated in his car, with his hand on the lever, he turned to Scudder, who was watching him with curious eyes.

      “I’m very much obliged to you, Scudder, for taking me through the house. And I’ll be more obliged to you if you’ll just keep it to yourself—what I said to you about last night.”

      “Sure,” said the old man, nodding gravely. “I like ye, doc’, and that kinder talk might do ye harm here in Calvinton. We don’t hold much to dreams and visions down this way. But, say, ’twas a mighty interestin’ dream, wa’n’t it? I guess Miss Jean hones for them white pillars, many a day—they sorter stand for old times. They draw ye, don’t they?”

      “Yes, my friend,” said Carmichael as he moved the lever, “they speak of the past. There is a magic in those white pillars. They draw you.”

      Originally published in 1911.

      The moon was high in the sky. The wind was laid. So silent was the vast stretch of mountain wilderness, aglint with the dew, that the tinkle of a rill far below in the black abyss seemed less a sound than an evidence of the pervasive quietude, since so slight a thing, so distant, could compass so keen a vibration. For an hour or more the three men who lurked in the shadow of a crag in the narrow mountain-pass, heard nothing else. When at last they caught the dull reverberation of a slow wheel and the occasional metallic clank of a tire against a stone, the vehicle was fully three miles distant by the winding road in the valley. Time lagged. Only by imperceptible degrees the sound of deliberate approach grew louder on the air as the interval of space lessened. At length, above their ambush at the summit of the mountain’s brow the heads of horses came into view, distinct in the moonlight between the fibrous pines and the vast expanse of the sky above the valley. Even then there was renewed delay. The driver of the wagon paused to rest the team.

      The three lurking men did not move; they scarcely ventured to breathe. Only when there was no retrograde possible, no chance of escape, when the vehicle was fairly on the steep declivity of the road, the precipice sheer on one side, the wall of the ridge rising perpendicularly on the other, did two of them, both revenue-raiders disguised as mountaineers, step forth from the shadow. The other, the informer, a genuine mountaineer, still skulked motionless in the darkness. The “revenuers,” ascending the road, maintained a slow, lunging gait, as if they had toiled from far.

      Their abrupt appearance had the effect of a galvanic shock to the man handling the reins, a stalwart, rubicund fellow, who visibly paled. He drew up so suddenly as almost to throw the horses from their feet.

      “G’ evenin’,” ventured Browdie, the elder of the raiders, in a husky voice affecting an untutored accent. He had some special ability as a mimic, and, being familiar with the dialect and manners of the people, this gift greatly facilitated the rustic impersonation he had essayed. “Ye’re haulin’ late,” he added, for the hour was close to midnight.

      “Yes, stranger; haulin’ late, from Eskaqua—a needcessity.”

      “What’s yer cargo?” asked Browdie, seeming only ordinarily inquisitive.

      A sepulchral cadence was in the driver’s voice, and the disguised raiders noted that the three other men on the wagon had preserved, throughout, a solemn silence. “What we-uns mus’ all be one day, stranger—a corpus.”

      Browdie was stultified for a moment Then, sustaining his assumed character, he said: “I hope it be nobody I know. I be fairly well acquainted in Eskaqua, though I hail from down in Lonesome Cove. Who be dead!”

      There was palpably a moment’s hesitation before the spokesman replied: “Watt Wyatt; died day ’fore yestiddy.”

      At the words, one of the silent men in the wagon turned his face suddenly, with such obvious amazement depicted upon

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