CHAPTER X.

_Peleg’s Ghost Story._

“Bless my lucky stars, Peleg Graves, you clear of Nat Wood at last. Ever since I first met him there at home, when he didn’t have a single thing to take with him except the clothes he had on his back, I have been afraid of that fellow. He didn’t have but one shirt to bless himself with, and when it got soiled, he would take it off and wash it. The idea of him washing his clothes! I guess he thought that the Old Fellow would wash them.” Here Peleg cast frightened glances toward the bushes on each side of the road as if he was fearful that “the other fellow” would suddenly come out at him. He fancied he could almost see him with his flashing eyes, horns on his head and cloven feet all ready to take the rush, but as he went on he began to gather courage. “And then his having a secret, too, and he wouldn’t tell me what it meant. ‘Here I am and there I am,’” whispered Peleg, who was so badly frightened that he could not remember the words Nat had used. “Now what did those words mean? I tell you there is somebody helping Nat; you hear me?”

While Peleg was going over his soliloquy in this way he was making good time down the road, and finally he became weary with his headlong pace and slackened his gait to a walk; a fast walk it was, too, so that in a very short while all Nat and his strange words were left behind.

It was twenty miles to the place where Peleg lived, and although faint with hunger and so weary that he could scarcely drag one foot after the other, he never stopped to ask one of the good-hearted settlers for a bite to eat, and never thought of sitting down to rest his tired limbs. He kept on, anxious to get his roof over his head and impatient to hear what his father would have to say about Nat and his doings, until just as the sun was rising he came within sight of the cabin door and saw Mr. Graves standing there and taking a look at the weather. The man was so surprised to see him that he was obliged to take two looks before he could make up his mind that it was Peleg and nobody else.

“Is that you, Peleg?” he exclaimed, as the boy threw down one of the bars and crawled through it “Where’s the money?”

“Oh, pap!” was all that Peleg could say in reply.

Mr. Graves began to look uneasy. Like all ignorant men he was very superstitious, and he straightway believed that Peleg had seen something that he could not understand.

“Say, Peleg,” he added in a lower tone, stepping off the porch and taking the boy by the arm. “What did you see up there in the woods? You have not been to Manchester and back, have you?”

“Yes, I have, too; and if you want to go down there and search for that money, you can go; but I am going to stay here. I wish you would give me a bite to eat and a drink of water. I am just about dead.”

Peleg had by this time reached the porch, and he threw himself down upon it as if he had lost all strength, and rested his head upon his hands. Mr. Graves began to believe that Peleg had seen something that was rather more than his nerves could stand, and went around the house after a drink of water, while his mother, who had been aroused by this time, came to the door. She saw Peleg sitting there with his head buried in his hands, and of course her mother’s heart went out to him.

“Oh, Peleg, what is the matter?” she exclaimed.

“Oh, mother, you just ought to hear the words that Nat uses to find out whether or not he is on the trail of those papers,” said Peleg, lifting a very haggard face and looking at her.

At that moment Mr. Graves came around the corner of the house with a gourd full of drinking water. Peleg seized it as though he had not had any for a month, and never let the gourd go until he had drunk the whole of it.

“That makes me feel some better,” said he.

“You passed several streams on the way,” said Mr. Graves. “Why didn’t you stop and get a drink?”

“Oh, pap, I dassent. I can hear those words ringing in my ears now, and I wanted to get so far away that I couldn’t hear them. ‘Here I am and there I am!’ Oh, my soul!”

“Why--what are you trying to get through yourself?” inquired Mr. Graves; and if the truth must be told he drew a little closer to Peleg.

“Well, sir, I am telling you the truth when I say that that there Nat has some dealings with that Fellow down there,” said Peleg, pointing toward the ground. “He goes around looking for those papers--”

“Ah! Get out!” exclaimed Graves.

“It is a fact; and if you don’t believe it, you can just go down there and watch him as I did. He says that everything, the trees and the rocks and the leaves and the bushes, are in cahoots with him because he took such good care of old man Nickerson when he was alive, buying him tobacco and such, and that he told him what words to use while looking for those papers. Why, the branches of the trees moved and pointed out the way to him.”

Mr. Graves was completely amazed by this revelation, and seated himself on the porch beside Peleg; while S’manthy gasped for breath and found it impossible for her to say anything. She lifted her hands in awe toward the rafters of the porch for a moment, closed her eyes, and then her hands fell helplessly by her side. She shook her head but could not utter a sound.

“It is a fact, I tell you; that isn’t all I have seen, either,” said Peleg. “When we came to Manchester and Nat wanted to buy some grub and things--pap, he has ten dollars; and he wouldn’t offer me a cent of it.”

“Where did he get ten dollars?” asked Mr. Graves, in surprise.

“I don’t know. I expect it must have been some he had left that the old man gave him. He bought some grub and a pick-ax and a spade, and left them there so that I could go and get them this morning; and that set the storekeeper to going. He warned me not to let the ghosts catch me--”

“Oh, my soul!” exclaimed S’manthy, raising her hands toward the rafters again. “Have they got ghosts up there?”

“You just bet they have,” answered Peleg, trembling all over. “But Nat didn’t seem afraid of them at all.”

Mr. Graves leaned back against the post near which he was sitting, stretched his legs out straight before him and looked fixedly at the ground. He had never heard of ghosts being in the woods, and this made him wonder if he would dare go after the cows when they failed to come up.

“I don’t think you had better go back there any more, Peleg,” said he, when he had taken time to think the matter over.

“You may just bet I won’t go back. I have not got use for a boy who will talk to them in language I cannot understand. And worse than that, he led the way to old man Nickerson’s farm by the back way, through bushes that grew thicker’n the hair on a dog’s back, and he wanted me to come back the same way. Mighty clear of me!”

“I reckon we had best go and let Jonas know about this,” said Mr. Graves, after thinking once more upon the matter.

“Well, you can go and I will stay here and get something to eat,” said Peleg. “He will find Nat within a few rods of the old man’s house. Dog-gone such luck! Why couldn’t the old man have left his money out in plain sight so that a fellow could get it?”

“Did you see any of the ghosts?” said his mother, in a low tone.

“No, I didn’t, and I kept a close watch for them, too. You see Nat says they don’t come around until at night. I wonder if there is anything left of that boy up there?”

“I hope to goodness that they have cleaned him out entirely,” said Mr. Graves, angrily. “If we can’t have any of that money I don’t want him to have it, either. Now you go in and take a bite, and I will make up my mind what we are going to do.”

“Are you waiting for me to go up to Jonas’s house with you?”

“Yes, I reckon you had better. You have been up there and saw how the matter stands, and you can tell him better than I can.”

“I am mighty glad he won’t ask me to go back to old man Nickerson’s woods with him,” whispered Peleg, as he followed his mother into the house. “I wouldn’t stir a peg to please anybody.”

“What do ghosts look like, Peleg?” asked S’manthy, as she brought out a plate of cold bread and meat and set them on the table before the boy. “I have often heard of them but I never saw them.”

“Don’t ask me. I looked everywhere for them, but they would not show up. I’ll bet Nat can tell by this time how they look--that is if he did not get scared at them like myself and run away.”

By the time that Peleg had satisfied his appetite Mr. Graves had thought over the situation and determined upon his course. He would not go near Mr. Nickerson’s farm--he was as close to it as he wanted to be; but he would go up and tell Jonas what Peleg had seen. Jonas was a good fellow, and perhaps he would do as much for him under the same circumstances. If Jonas and Caleb thought enough of the money that was hidden there to go up and face the ghosts, that was their lookout and not his.

“You had your gun, Peleg,” said Mr. Graves, when the boy came out the door and put on his hat “Why didn’t you depend upon that!”

“Course I had my gun; but it was not loaded. I declare, I never once thought of that old single barrel.”

“If one of them had seen that gun in your hands--”

“Shaw! I ain’t thinking of that. I ran away so quick that I left it behind. Maybe Nat used it last night.”

“But you say he ain’t afraid of them,” suggested his father. “What should he want to use your gun for?”

“Of course he ain’t afraid of them in the day-time; but when it comes down dark night in the woods, and you hear the bushes rattling and something go g-g-r-r--”

“Oh, Peleg, stop!” ejaculated his mother, who was all in a tremble.

“Stop your noise, Peleg,” said Mr. Graves, who could not bear to hear him imitate the ghosts in this way. “Maybe they don’t go that way at all.”

“Well, if you want to find out, you had best go up there and stay all night,” said Peleg, shaking his head in a wise manner. “And I will tell you another thing that happened while I was up there. Nat told me that I must not be frightened, for when he got onto the trail of those papers again----”

“Did he lose the trail of them?” asked Mr. Graves.

“I reckon so; for he looked up into a tree and said: ‘Here I am and there I am,’ and the tree showed him which way to go.”

“Aw! Get out,” exclaimed Mr. Graves. “Could a tree speak to him or point with its branches to tell him when he was going wrong?”

“That tree did as sure as you live,” said Peleg confidently.

“Did you see it?”

“Yes sir, I did. That tree was standing like any other tree, with its branches pointing upward, and when he said those words of his, one of the limbs pointed out so,” said Peleg, indicating the movement with his finger.

Mr. Graves looked rather hard at Peleg, as if he did not know whether to believe the statement or not, and the boy met his gaze without flinching. When Peleg told a lie he generally looked down at the ground.

“Well, go on. What did you see next?”

“Well, sir, when we got a little further he said I would hear something pretty soon, and it would make me wish that I had never been born. I tell you I did hear it, and--Oh, my soul! How can I ever tell it!”

“What did it sound like, Peleg?” asked his mother.

“A dead tree was standing a short distance away and when Nat went on with his words: ‘Here I am and there I am,’ one of the branches on that tree let go all holds and came down to the ground with a crash and broke all to pieces. I certainly thought I was going with it, too.”

For the first time that day Mr. Graves uttered an exclamation of disgust, turned on his heel and went into the house for his rifle.

“You can hear those sounds right here on the place,” remarked his mother. “That’s nothing new.”

“The little fule!” exclaimed Mr. Graves, who just then came out again with his rifle. “You got so frightened with the ghosts that you don’t know the signs of falling weather when you hear them. It is going to rain very shortly.”

“Well, I just want you to go up there if you dare,” said Peleg, somewhat taken aback by this explanation of the phenomenon which had frightened him. “Here you are, making all sorts of fun at my ghost stories, and you have gone and got your rifle to protect you. Leave that at home if you are not afraid to go up to Jonas’s house without it.”

“No, I reckon I will just take it along. What you have said about the ghosts may be true; but I don’t believe in such things as the trees and bushes telling him where to go. Come on now, and we’ll go up and see Jonas.”

“And are you going to leave me here all alone?” inquired Mrs. Graves, who went into the house for a shawl to throw over her head. “I’m going, too.”

“Now, S’manthy,” began her husband.

“I know all about it; but I ain’t a going to stay here all by myself after such talk as we have had,” said the woman, determinedly. “I have some business with Jonas’s wife as much as you have with him.”

Mr. Graves said no more. He probably knew how an argument would come out with his wife. He cast apprehensive glances at the bushes as he walked along, and seemed to be much occupied with his own thoughts. The money was there, there could be no mistake about that, and he had intended to go up there that very day so as to be on hand in case Peleg needed assistance; but the boy’s returning home with such a story had put new ideas into his head. Taking into consideration the way he felt now he would not have gone a step toward Mr. Nickerson’s woods if he knew the foot of every tree in them had a gold mine buried beneath it which he could have for the digging. He fully credited the tales about the ghosts; the rest of it he did not put any faith in.

“That’s the end of my dreams,” he muttered, as he walked along. “I say as Peleg did, dog-gone such luck! If the old man had left his money out where we could find it, well and good; but, as it stands, I have got to be a poor man all my life.”

In due time they arrived at Jonas’s house where they found his wife engaged in getting breakfast while her husband, with Caleb to help him, was engaged, down to the barn. Mrs. Graves stopped in the house, which she speedily turned upside down with her stories, while Mr. Graves kept on and found Jonas sitting on an inverted bucket, meditatively chewing a piece of straw, and Caleb walking around with his hands in his pockets. They had been discussing Nat’s absence, but they could not come to any determination about it. Nat was gone, it was money took him away and how were they going to work to cheat him out of it?

“Howdy,” said Jonas, who, upon looking up, discovered Mr. Graves approaching. “Have you started out bright and early this morning to go hunting?”

“Well--no,” replied Mr. Graves, taking his rifle from his shoulder. “I did not know but I might see a squirrel or two bobbing around. Seen anything of Nat lately?”

“No, I have not. Do you know what has become of him?”

“You’re right I do. He is up to old man Nickerson’s woods.”

“There now. We always allowed that he had gone up there. Has he got onto the trail of any money?”

“He has, but that’s all the good it will do him. Peleg has been up there with him.”

Jonas simply nodded his head as if to say that he knew as much long ago. He learned it when he went to Mr. Graves’ house to inquire about Nat.

“But it won’t do him any good, getting on the trail of that money won’t,” continued Mr. Graves. “There are ghosts up in those woods.”

“Ghosts!” exclaimed Jonas and Caleb in a breath. They looked hard at Mr. Graves and then they looked at Peleg. The boy simply nodded to show that his father was right.

“Did you see any of them?” asked Caleb, who was in a fair way of being frightened.

“Naw; I didn’t see any of them nor hear them, I didn’t stay long enough for that I took my foot in my hand and came home.”

“Peleg has & long story to tell, and I thought you would rather hear it from him than anybody else, so I brought him along.”

As this was the introduction to Peleg’s story those who were standing up found places to sit down, and waited impatiently for him to begin.