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In the light of what I already knew, I was considerably puzzled by this fresh manifestation. The Colonel fretted and fumed up and down the veranda, muttering something about these fool niggers all being alike. He had bragged considerably about Mose's immunity in respect to ha'nts, and I think he was rather dashed at his favorite's falling-off. I held my peace, and Radnor returned in a few minutes.
"'Tain't nothing as I can see," one of the older men said, "that is likely to hurt us. It's a curse on the schooner, not on us folks that warn't aboard her when she run under that other boat. And as long as we keep away from the spot where the poor devils was drowned, we ain't likely to see no ha'nts." The cook's eyes rolled tremendously. "You thinks likely this yere is that Marlin B.?"
The Vanderveldes had taken the clergyman off in their car, and only Peter, his uncle, and Emma remained. "I'm ready!" snapped the bride. She didn't glance at the bridegroom, but the look she bestowed upon Emma made that doughty warrior quail. Emma conceived a mortal terror of Peter's wife. She took the place of the Boogerman and of ha'nts.
Knowing Hurry of old, who once trapped in our hunting grounds, and falling in with him on the Schoharie, just as he was on the p'int of starting for his summer ha'nts, we agreed to journey in company; not so much from fear of the Mingos, as from good fellowship, and, as he says, to shorten a long road."
"Uncle Peter," said Phil, while they were on their way home, "there couldn't be any ha'nts at all in the graveyard where my grandfather is buried, could there? Graciella read a lot of the tombstones to me one day, and they all said that all the people were good, and were resting in peace, and had gone to heaven. Tombstones always tell the truth, don't they, Uncle Peter?"
With his head out-thrust and his chin sunk below the level of his shoulders, the cook stood by the galley, in doubt and foreboding, and watched the boat pull away. His voice, when he spoke, gave me a start. "Look dah, boy! Look dah! Dey's sumpin' funny, yass, sah. 'Tain't safe foh to truck with ha'nts, no sah!
Dey could hear sump'n moanin' en groanin' 'bout de kitchen in de night-time, en w'en de win' would blow dey could hear sump'n a-hollerin' en sweekin' lack it wuz in great pain en sufferin'. En it got so atter a w'ile dat it wuz all Mars Marrabo's wife could do ter git a 'oman ter stay in de kitchen in de daytime long ernuff ter do de cookin'; en dey wa'n't naer nigger on de plantation w'at would n' rudder take forty dan ter go 'bout dat kitchen atter dark, dat is, 'cep'n' Tenie; she did n' 'pear ter min' de ha'nts.
You know they's an awful wicked man buried down there in the woods, an' the sperrits of them he's inju'ed ha'nts the thicket every night. There isn't anybody, that I know of, that 'ud go down there aftah dark for anything on this livin' yearth." "Then who sees 'em?" asked John Jay, with a skeptical grin.
Yes, sah; dat de reg'lar annyul Hallowe'en convintion whut li'l' black Mose interrup'. Right dar am all de sperits in de world, an' all de ha'nts in de world, an' all de hobgoblins in de world, an' all de ghouls in de world, an' all de spicters in de world, an' all de ghostes in de world.
He went pale and paler while we stood talking it over, and crossed himself he was a Catholic furtively behind the water-butt. "I ain't never 'a' been keen on ha'nts anyhow, Mr. Dixon," he told me aggrievedly at dinner that evening. "I got no use for 'em. I ain't never known any good to come o' anything with a ha'nt tagged to it, an' we're makin' a ill beginnin' o' this island business, Mr.
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