University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

After sauntering about the village till noon, here and there
dropping insinuations calculated to confirm the story which he
expected the woman would be the means of raising to the disparagement
of the young lawyer, the old man returned to his
house and entered with an air of apparent indifference and abstraction,
while secretly he was trembling with the most eager
curiosity to hear something to apprise him of the result of his infernal
contrivance; nor did he have to wait long in suspense.
Tabby, hearing the footsteps of her master on the floor, the next
moment, came hurrying from the pantry, flourishing a plate in
one hand and a spoon in the other in her fluster, and broke
forth—

“Don't you think—O don't you think, Mr. Hosmer, what a
flare up we have had here, to be sure!”

“Why, what has happened—what has happened, Tabby?”
asked the old man, in affected surprise and alarm.

“Why, a woman with a young 'un come in and asked Lucy
for money to buy things for her little Lot, she said. But Lucy
did n't seem to hear her call it Lot; for she went out and brought
and gin the creter a whole half dollar!—(fore I'd done that!—)
and asked, in a kind of pitying way, how she come to be so
needy. The woman answered she'd been misfortunit. Lucy
then told her she hoped she'd make good use of the money, and
asked her what her child's name was; and the woman blabbed
it right out afore us both—Lot Fisher! Lor! how beat Lucy
did look, to be sure! But she soon kinder plucked up and asked
the woman, why she called it by that name. Well the creter
hung her head a little, and said she had got good reasons for it.
Jist at that minit I looked up, and Lucy was as white as a cloth
and enymost quite fainted away! So I made a spring for the
camphor bottle, but trod on the dog's tail, who up and bit this
little finger, I done up here, to the bone. Well, I yelled, and

fainted too, I do 'spose, clean away; for whin I come to, Lucy
had got over it enough to get to her room, and the pesky woman
and all had cleared out, leaving me,” she added dolefully, “like
some dead lady laid out for the cold grave.”

“That all?” said the old man contemptuously. “Poo! what
a fuss!—and all kicked up by finding out what every body, but
Lucy and you, knew before about the fellow you made such a
parade for, a week or two ago here at tea.”

“Yes, ony think! But if I'd knowed it then,—fore I'd touch
to do a thing!”—replied the beauty, shaking her head with
clenched teeth and a look that was meant to carry out the sentence
more forcibly than any words she could find for expressing
it.

“Well, but about Lucy,” resumed the former, “it has n't made
her sick, has it?”

“No, 'spose not, but”—

“But what?—have you been up to see her since?”

“O yes a few minits ago, to tell her dinner was 'bout ready,
and kinder talk it over a little; but she was in a taking still,
and said she should n't want any dinner. Fore I'd cry to be
obleeged to give up such a fellow!” she added as she left the
room to resume her work.

“It has pretty much done the business, I guess,” muttered Old
Jude to himself, with a lip curling with inward exultation;
“and the stories which she will now soon hear to confirm the
impression that has evidently been made, will give the finishing
blow.”

And the old man was not mistaken. While the heart-stricken
Lucy was striving to hope against conviction, that the inference
the woman's words and conduct had compelled her to draw, did
not apply to her lover, the village gossips, one after another
dropped in, full of mysterious hints concerning a certain discovery
they just made, which they would not, at first, for the world tell
Mr. Hosmer's family, but which they finally did tell with many
regrets, that Miss Lucy did not feel well enough to appear, that
they might console her in her grief and disappointment. These
communications, all, in some shape or other, making established
facts of what was before a matter of inference, continued to be
repeated to Lucy, by the officious Tabby, till the former supposed
there could no longer be a doubt about the former disgraceful

conduct of her lover; and, though ready to sink with grief and
mortification, she soon was enabled to summon the stern resolution
to tear his image from her heart, and have no further communication
with him forever.

O, ye, who tamper with the loves of united hearts, especially
those of the softer sex, who with keener sensibilities to cause suffering,
are more helplessly your victims, the terms brute and
fiend are appellations too mild for your deserts! Your offences
may not, indeed, be punishable under any human code; but so
long as your acts implant wounds in the heart, to which the
blows of the steel dagger were a mercy, your doom in another
world will be that of the assassin and murderer!

“I now stand on firm ground, at last,” said Old Jude to himself,
as he retired to bed that night under the full persuasion that,
by his last cruel and contemptible trick, he had brought his
whole plan of operations to a successful close, and might now bid
defiance to every threatened danger. But the memorable saying
of the Apostolic philosopher, “He that thinketh he standeth let
him take heed lest he fall,” is generally no less applicable to our
temporal than spiritual condition. The old man's guiding maxim
had always been, steer clear of the law and seize every advantage;
when, therefore, he had shielded himself against its meshes, as
his cunning and experience had generally enabled him to do, it
never seemed to have entered into his calculations that any
other power or circumstance could affect him. And the occurrence,
consequently, by which he had been so startled a few
nights before, and by the less questionable repetition of which,
he was destined now again to be humbled, and soon to be overthrown,
found him wholly unprepared and helpless, it being
something against which his system of tactics had made no provision.

About midnight, the same unearthly groan, which he had
heard before, struck on his slumbering senses and instantly
aroused him to consciousness.

“Just as I feared—that voice again!” hurriedly mumbled the
old man in troubled accents, as he sprang up in bed, and with a
beating heart awaited the expected repetition. The sound however
was not repeated; but instead of it, a tall figure, in white,

seemingly rising slowly through the floor and standing in frightful
outline before him, greeted his appalled vision, and rooted
him speechless and spell-bound to the spot! After remaining
stationary a moment, looking down upon him, as the guilty old
man conceived, with a look of mingled sorrow and indignation,
the figure raised one of its shrouded arms, and silently and solemnly
pointed upwards; then slowly receding, it passed through
the open door and disappeared.

Old Jude had not been much of a believer in ghosts; and, but
for his guilty conscience, he would not probably have lost his self
possession. And even as it was, when he saw the apparently
tangible object retreating through the door, a gleam of hope shot
through his mind, that it might be a personage of flesh and
blood; and the relieving thought so far restored his prostrate
spirit and strength, that he soon found voice to cry for help.

“Shack! Shack! Shack!” he screamed with desperate energy.

But he was answered only by the echo of his own husky voice.
No response came from the room of the sleeping servant. The
old man then mustered courage enough to scramble off the bed
and run round to Shack's room; when finding the latter snoring
loudly, he seized him by the shoulder and shook him rudely,
while with chattering teeth he exclaimed:

“Shack! Shack!—did you hear it—did you see it, Shack?”

“Um? What?—wha—wha—what is it?”

“The shape—that is I mean the man or something that has
been in my room and has just gone out.”

“Um? Was there one? My Gorry! I wish I had a club!
but I ain't afraid—we'll go down and light a candle, and then
I'll help you catch him.”

So saying, Shack hastily slipped on his pantaloons, and, followed
by the old man, hurried down stairs and struck a light;
when they both went over the whole house, but found every
door and window fastened, while no indications of house-breakers
were anywhere discoverable within or without. Long before
this was accomplished, the alarmed females were dressed and
out to ascertain what was the matter. Old Jude tried hard to
allay their fears, and quiet the tumult he had occasioned, by attributing
the cause of his disturbance, if in fact he was not
wholly mistaken in supposing he heard or saw something, to
the jumping of a rat or the cat; but his restless and excited manner

wholly belied his assertions and only increased their apprehensions.
He, however, was quite willing to have a light kept
burning in his own and each of their rooms during the remainder
of the night, and that Shack should walk the halls as a
watch. The next morning the old man charged the family to
keep secret everything which had happened. But notwithstanding
all his precautions, the whole village had the story before
night, that the house was haunted, and Old Jude had seen
a ghost, and strange and various were the comments that were
made on the occasion.

During that day the old man struggled hard, but in vain, to
banish this strange, and more strangely repeated visitation from
his mind. Sometimes he would almost convince himself, that
it was some person whose design was either to rob or to frighten
him. But the question which he could not answer, constantly
arose—how did he get into the house—if robbery was the object
why did he not effect it, and steal off in silence, instead of making
a noise, and showing himself? And what object could any
one have in merely firightening him, without making known
any wish or demand? Thus he was met in every attempt to
solve the mystery on natural principles; which his conscience
failing not to remind him, that each of these visitations followed
a heinous wrong towards his niece,—the first the finishing act
of his fraud on her property, and the last his attempt on her happiness,—his
guilty conscience whispered, “thou knowest,” and
completed his confusion. And yet he determined to yield not
to its promptings.

“Folly!” he would exclaim, “to think a man, who has been
dead ten years, can come up to upbraid the living! A ghost!
what is a ghost? The mere thing of the imagination, which
cannot be seen by the natural eye. But this I did see with my
natural eyes; and it must be something real—something tangible;
and, whether I can tell how it came there or not, it must
be something that I can exclude from my room and I will do
it!”

Taking courage from this view of the subject, he began to
contrive how he could best secure his room against the further
intrusion of the dreaded apparition. And with this object in
view, he went up to his garret and overhauled a parcel of old
hardware and cutlery, left on hand when he quitted trade. Here

he found a door lock of unusual size and strength; and he instantly
resolved to fit it to the door of his sleeping room. Accordingly,
selecting corresponding screws and staples, and providing
himself with suitable tools, he proceeded to his room and
went to work.

“There!” said he with a sort of gleeful but forced bravado, as
he completed the adjustment of the massive implement and
brought the rusty bolt to play in its place. “There, let me turn
this key, thus, on the inside here, when I go to bed, and I will
defy the Devil himself to get in!”

But although Old Jude had in this manner succeeded in fortifying
his feelings, in some measure, against the contingencies of
the night, yet it was not without many fears and forebodings,
that he retired to his chamber. He would gladly have had
Shack, or some other one, sleep in his room; but his fears, that
the ghost, or whatever it was that had appeared to him, might
communicate his guilty secret, were so strong as to overcome
his desire to be attended; and he therefore resolved to trust to
his precautions, and once more nerve himself to brave the result
alone. Accordingly, after turning the key of his ponderous
lock, and carefully examining the fastenings of the windows,
and inspecting every part of his room, even under his bed, he
trimmed his lamp to burn through night, and went to bed, when
favored by his exhaustion and loss of sleep the previous night,
his troubled spirit was soon wrapt in forgetfulness.