The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK ®. Sarah Orne Jewett

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      “What ailed you-uns ter name me as the corpus, ’Gene Barker?” demanded Walter Wyatt, when he had regained the capacity of coherent speech.

      “Oh, I hed ter do suddint murder on somebody,” declared the driver, all bluff and reassured and red-faced again, “an’ I couldn’t think quick of nobody else. Besides, I helt a grudge agin’ you fer not stuffin’ mo’ straw ’twixt them jimmyjohns in the coffin-box.”

      “That’s a fac’. Ye air too triflin’ ter be let ter live, Watt,” cried one of their comrades. “I hearn them jugs clash tergether in the coffin-box when ’Gene checked the team up suddint, I tell you. An’ them men sure ’peared ter me powerful suspectin’.”

      “I hearn the clash of them jimmyjohns,” chimed in the driver. “I really thunk my hour war come. Some informer must hev set them men ter spyin’ round fer moonshine.”

      “Oh, surely nobody wouldn’t dare,” urged one of the group, uneasily; for the identity of an informer was masked in secrecy, and his fate, when discovered, was often gruesome.

      “They couldn’t hev noticed the clash of them jimmyjohns, nohow,” declared the negligent Watt, nonchalantly. “But namin’ me fur the dead one! Supposin’ they air revenuers fur true, an’ hed somebody along, hid out in the bresh, ez war acquainted with me by sight—”

      “Then they’d hev been skeered out’n thar boots, that’s all,” interrupted the self-sufficient ’Gene. “They would hev ’lowed they hed viewed yer brazen ghost, bold ez brass, standin’ at the head of yer own coffin-box.”

      “Or mebbe they mought hev recognized the Wyatt favor, ef they warn’t acquainted with me,” persisted Watt, with his unique sense of injury.

      Eugene Barker defended the temerity of his inspiration. “They would hev jes thought ye war kin ter the deceased, an’ at-tendin’ him ter his long home.”

      “’Gene don’t keer much fur ye ter be alive nohow, Watt Wyatt,” one of the others suggested tactlessly, “’count o’ Minta Elladine Biggs.”

      Eugene Barker’s off-hand phrase was incongruous with his sudden gravity and his evident rancor as he declared: “I ain’t carin’ fur sech ez Watt Wyatt. An’ they do say in the cove that Minta Elladine Biggs hev gin him the mitten, anyhow, on account of his gamesome ways, playin’ kyerds, a-bet-tin’ his money, drinkin’ apple-jack, an’ sech.”

      The newly constituted ghost roused himself with great vitality as if to retort floutingly; but as he turned, his jaw suddenly fell; his eyes widened with a ghastly distension. With an unsteady arm extended he pointed silently. Distinctly outlined on the lid of-the coffin was the simulacrum of the figure of aman.

      One of his comrades, seated on the tailboard of the wagon, had discerned a significance in the abrupt silence. As he turned, he, too, caught a fleeting glimpse of that weird image on the coffin-lid. But he was of a more mundane pulse. The apparition roused in him only a wonder whence could come this shadow in the midst of the moon-flooded road. He lifted his eyes to the verge of the bluff above, and there he descried an indistinct human form, which suddenly disappeared as he looked, and at that moment the simulacrum vanished from the lid of the box.

      The mystery was of instant elucidation. They were suspected, followed. The number of their pursuers of course they could not divine, but at least one of the revenue-officers had trailed the wagon between the precipice and the great wall of the ascent on the right, which had gradually dwindled to a diminished height. Deep gullies were here and there washed out by recent rains, and one of these indentations might have afforded an active man access to the summit. Thus the pursuer had evidently kept abreast of them, speeding along in great leaps through the lush growth of huckleberry bushes, wild grasses, pawpaw thickets, silvered by the moon, all fringing the great forests that had given way on the shelving verge of the steeps where the road ran. Had he overheard their unguarded, significant words? Who could divine, so silent were the windless mountains, so deep a-dream the darksome woods, so spellbound the mute and mystic moonlight?

      The group maintained a cautious reticence now, each revolving the problematic disclosure of their secret, each canvassing the question whether the pursuer himself was aware of his betrayal of his stealthy proximity. Not till they had reached the ford of the river did they venture on a low-toned colloquy. The driver paused in midstream and stepped out on the pole between the horses to let down the check-reins, as the team manifested an inclination to drink in transit; and thence, as he stood thus perched, he gazed to and fro, the stretch of dark and lustrous ripples baffling all approach within ear-shot, the watering of the horses justifying the pause and cloaking its significance to any distant observer.

      But the interval was indeed limited; the mental processes of such men are devoid of complexity, and their decisions prompt. They advanced few alternatives; their prime object was to be swiftly rid of the coffin and its inculpating contents, and with the “revenuer” so hard on their heels this might seem a troublous problem enough.

      “Put it whar a coffin b’longs—in the churchyard,” said Wyatt; for at a considerable distance beyond the rise of the opposite bank could be seen a barren clearing in which stood a gaunt, bare, little white frame building that served all the country-side for its infrequent religious services.

      “We couldn’t dig a grave before that spy—ef he be a revenuer sure enough—could overhaul us,” Eugene Barker objected.

      “We could turn the yearth right smart, though,” persisted Wyatt, for pickax and shovel had been brought in the wagon for the sake of an aspect of verisimilitude and to mask their true intent.

      Eugene Barker acceded to this view. “That’s the dinctum—dig a few jes fer a blind. We kin slip the coffin-box under the church-house ’fore he gits in sight,—he’ll be feared ter follow too close,—an’ leave it thar till the other boys kin wagon it ter the cross-roads’ store ter-morrer night.”

      The horses, hitherto held to the sober gait of funeral travel, were now put to a speedy trot, unmindful of whatever impression of flight the pace might give to the revenue-raider in pursuit. The men were soon engrossed in their deceptive enterprise in the churchyard, plying pickax and shovel for dear life; now and again they paused to listen vainly for the sound of stealthy approach. They knew that there was the most precarious and primitive of foot-bridges across the deep stream, to traverse which would cost an unaccustomed wayfarer both time and pains; thus the interval was considerable before the resonance of rapid footfalls gave token that their pursuer had found himself obliged to sprint smartly along the country road to keep any hope of ever again’ viewing the wagon which the intervening water-course had withdrawn from his sight. That this hope had grown tenuous was evident in his relinquishment of his former caution, for when they again caught a glimpse of him he was forging along in the middle of the road without any effort at concealment. But as the wagon appeared in the perspective, stationary, hitched to the hedge of the graveyard, he recurred to his previous methods. The four men still within the in-closure, now busied in shovelling the earth back again into the excavation they had so swiftly made, covertly watched him as he skulked into the shadow of the wayside. The little “church-house,” with all its windows whitely aglare in the moonlight, reflected the pervasive sheen, and silent, spectral, remote, it seemed as if it might well harbor at times its ghastly neighbors from the quiet cemetery without, dimly ranging themselves once more in the shadowy ranks of its pews or grimly stalking down the drear and deserted aisles. The fact that the rising ground toward the rear of the building necessitated a series of steps at the entrance, enabled the officer to mask behind this tall flight his crouching approach, and thus he ensconced himself in the angle between the wall and the steps, and looked forth in fancied security.

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