orning found out why Olga won't eat mushrooms. It was very
cold again last night, for this time of year. Percy came over, and we
had a ripping fire and popped Ontario pop-corn with Ontario maple sirup
poured over it. Olga and Olie and Terry all came in and sat about the
stove. And being absolutely happy and contented and satisfied with life
in general, we promptly fell to talking horrors, the same as a cook
stirs lemon juice into her pudding-sauce, I suppose, to keep its
sweetness from being too cloying. That revel in the by-paths of the
Poesque began with Dinky-Dunk's casual reference to the McKinnon ranch
and Percy's inquiry as to why its earlier owner had given it up. So
Dinky-Dunk recounted the story of Andrew Cochrane's death. And it was
noticeable that poor old Olie betrayed visible signs of distress at this
tale of a young ranchman being frozen to death alone in his shack in
mid-winter. So Dinky-Dunk, apparently with malice prepense, enlarged on
his theme, describing how all young Cochrane's stock had starved in
their stalls and how his collie dog which had been chained to a
kennel-box outside the shack had first drawn attention to the tragedy. A
government inspector, in riding past, had noticed the shut-up shack, had
pounded on the door, and had promptly discovered the skeleton of the dog
with a chain and collar still attached to the clean-picked neckbones.
And inside the shack he had found the dead man himself, as life-like,
because of the intense cold, as though he had fallen asleep the night
before.

It was not a pleasant story, and my efforts to picture the scene gave me
rather a bristly feeling along the pin-feather area of my anatomy. And
again undoubted signs of distress were manifest in poor Olie. The face
of that simple-souled Swede took on such a look of wondering trouble
that Dinky-Dunk deliberately and at great detail told of a ghost that
had been repeatedly seen in an abandoned wickyup a little farther west
in the province.

And that, of course, fired the Celtic soul of Terry, who told of the
sister of his Ould Counthry master who had once been taken to a
hospital. And just at dusk on the third day after that his young master
was walking down the dark hall. As he passed his sister's door, there
she stood all in white, quietly brushing her hair, as plain as day to
his eyes. And with that the master rushed down-stairs to his mother
asking how Sheila had got back from the hospital. And his old mother,