The Actress' Daughter. May Agnes Fleming

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СКАЧАТЬ the forest path lonely and silent, with the dark pine woods bounding the vision and extending away for miles. In the rear of the house was a small garden, filled in summer with vegetables of all sorts, and the product of this garden formed the principal source of Miss Jerusha's income. The old maid was not rich by any means, but with the vegetables and poultry she raised herself, the stockings she knit, the cloth she wove, the wool she dyed, the candy she made and sold to the Burnfield grocers, and the sewing she "took in" she managed to live comfortably enough and "lay up something," as she said herself, "for a rainy day"—a figure of speech which was popularly supposed to refer to times of adversity and old age.

      A strong-minded, clear-headed, sharp-tongued, wide-awake, uncompromising specimen of femaledom "away down east" was Miss Jerusha. Never since the time she had first donned pantalettes, and had "swopped" her rag doll for Mary Ann Brown's china mug, could that respectable individual, the oldest inhabitant, recollect any occasion wherein Miss Jerusha had not got the best of the bargain, whatever that bargain might be. Though never remarkable at any time for her personal beauty, yet tradition averred that her thriftiness and smartness had on one or two occasions so far captivated certain Jonathans of her district, that they had gallantly tendered their heart, hand and brand new swallow-tails. But looking upon mankind as an inferior race of animals, made more for ornament than use, Miss Jerusha had contemptuously refused them, and had marched on with grim determination through the vale of years in her single blessedness up to her present mature age of five-and-forty.

      The personal appearance of the lady could hardly be called prepossessing at first sight, or at second sight either, for that matter. Unusually tall, and unusually thin, Miss Jerusha looked not unlike a female hop-pole, and her figure was not to say improved by her dress, which never could be persuaded to approach her ankles, and was so narrow that a long step seemed rather a hazardous experiment. Her hair, which was of a neutral tint between red and orange, a vague hue commonly known as "carroty," was disfigured by no cap or other sort of headgear, but tethered into a tight knot behind, and then forcibly secured. Her face looked not unlike that of a yellow parchment image as she there sat knitting in the red firelight, rocking herself back and forward in a rheumatic old chair that kept up a horrible crechy-crawchy as she squeaked back and forth.

      The night was Christmas Eve, and unusually wild and stormy, even for that season. The wind blew in terrible gusts, shrieking wildly through the bare arms of the pines, drifting the snow into great hills, and driving the piercing sleet clamorously against the windows. Miss Jerusha drew closer to the fire, with a shiver, and paused for a moment to listen to the wild winter storm.

      "My gracious! what a blast o' win' that there was. Ef the old Satin ain't been let loose to-night my name's not Jerusha Skamp. Go out and bring in some more wood, Fly, and don't let Betsey Periwinkle eat the tea things while you're gone. My-y-y conscience! how it blows—getting worse and worse every minute too. If there's any ships on the river to-night the first land they make will be the bottom, or I'm no judge. And I oughter be, I think," said Miss Jerusha, administering a kick to Betsey Periwinkle, as that amiable quadruped began some friendly advances toward her ball of stocking yarn, "seein' I've lived here since I was born, and that's forty-five years come next June. I should not wonder now if some shiftless, good-for-nothing vagabones was to 'low themselves for to get ketched in the storm and come to me to let 'em in and keep 'em all night. Well, Miss Jerusha, don't you think you see yourself a-doing of it though! People seems to think I was made specially by Providence to 'tend onto 'em and make yarb tea for them to swaller as is sick, and look arter them as is well, whenever they get ketched in a storm, or a nightmare, or anything. Humph! I guess nobody never seen any small sand, commonly called mite stones, in my eyes, and never will if I can help it. What on airth keeps that there little black viper now, I wonder. You, Fly!"

      "Yes, old Mist, here I is," answered Fly, coming blustering in like a sable goddess of the wind, loaded down with wood. "An' oh, Miss Jerry, all de ghosts as eber was is ober in dat ar inferally ole house 'long the road."

      "Ghosts! ugh!" said Miss Jerusha, with a contemptuous snarl, for the worthy spinster despised "spirits from the vasty deep" as profoundly as she did mankind. "Don't make a greater fool o' yourself, you misfortunate little nat'ral you, than the Lord himself made you. Put some wood on the fire, and be off and hurry up supper."

      "Miss Jerry, I 'clear I seed it own bressed self," protested Fly, with horror-stricken eyes. "I jes did, as plain as I see you now, an' if as how you doesn't believe me, Miss Jerry, go and look for yourself."

      "Lord bless the child! what is she talking about?" said Miss Jerusha, turning around so sharply that little Fly jumped back in alarm.

      "Ghosts, Miss Jerry," whimpered the poor little darkey.

      "Ghosts! Fly, look here! You want me to switch you within an inch o' your life," said Miss Jerusha, laying down her knitting and compressing her lips.

      "Miss Jerry, I can't help it; I jes can't. Ef you're to kill me, I did see 'em, too, and you can see 'em yerself ef you'll only look out ob de winder," sobbed Fly, digging her knuckles into her eyes.

      Miss Jerusha, with sternly shut-up lips, glared upon the unhappy little negress for a moment in ominous silence, and then getting up, went to the window and looked out.

      But the window was thickly covered with frost, and nothing was to be seen from it.

      "Ef you'd only come to de door, Miss Jerry," wept Fly, taking her knuckles out of one eye, where they had been firmly imbedded.

      With the tramp of an iron-shod dragon, Miss Jerusha walked to the kitchen door, opened it, and looked out.

      A blinding drift of snow, a piercing blast of wind, a cutting shower of sleet, met her in the face, and for one moment forced her back.

      Only for a moment, for Miss Jerusha was not one to yield to trifles, and then, shading her eyes with her hands, she strove to pierce the darkness made white by the falling snow. No ghost met her gaze, however, but something that startled her quite as much—a long line of red light streaming along the lonesome, deserted road. There was no one living save herself all along the way for two miles, and no house of any kind save the ruins of an old cottage, long since deserted, and popularly supposed to be haunted.

      "Great Jemima!" exclaimed Miss Jerusha, as, after her first start of astonishment, she came in, closed and locked the door, "who can be in the old house? Somebody's bin caught in the storm, and went in there for shelter. Well, lors! I hope they won't come bothering me. If they do, I'll pack them off agin with a flea in their ear. You, Fly! ain't them pancakes fried yet? Oh, you lazy, shif'less, idle, good-for-nothing little reptyle! Ef you don't ketch particler fits afore ever you sleep this night! And I 'clare to man the kittle ain't even biled, much less the tea adrawin'! You, Fly!"

      Fly came rushing frantically out, and dodged Miss Jerusha's uplifted hand, which came down with a stunning force on the table. With a suppressed howl of pain, the enraged spinster shook her tingling fingers, and was about to pounce bodily upon her unlucky little servitor, when, in a lull of the storm, a knock at the door arrested the descending blow.

      Both mistress and maid paused and held their breath to listen.

      The wind and sleet came driving in fierce gusts against the house, shaking the doors and rattling the windows; then came a lull, and then the knock was repeated, this time more loudly.

      "Oh, Miss Jerry, it's a ghos'! Oh, Miss Jerry, it's a ghos'! an' 'deed a' 'deed I don't want for to go!" shrieked the terrified Fly, clinging wildly to Miss Jerusha's dress.

      With a vigorous shake the spinster shook off the clinging hands of poor little Fly, and laid her sprawling on the floor. Then approaching the door, she called, loudly СКАЧАТЬ