was it might be one of them ghosts
I had been running down so that very day, and mebby the same one Miss
Hampton seen on that very same porch. I thought I was in fur it then,
mebby, and I felt like some one had whispered to the back of my neck
it ought to be scared. And I WAS scared clean up into my hair. I stared
hard, fur I couldn't take my eyes away. Then purty soon I seen if it was
a ghost it must be a woman ghost. Fur it was dressed in light-coloured
clothes that moved jest a little in the breeze, and the clothes was so
near the colour of the moonlight they seemed to kind of silver into
it. You would of said it had jest floated there, and was waiting fur to
float away agin when the breeze blowed a little stronger, or the moon
drawed it.
It didn't move fur ever so long. Then it leaned forward through the gap
in the vines, and I seen the face real plain. It wasn't no ghost, it was
a lady. Then I knowed it must be Miss Hampton standing there. Away off
through the trees our camp fire sent up jest a dull kind of a glow. She
was standing there looking at that. I wondered why.
CHAPTER VIII
The next day we broke camp and was gone from that place, and I took away
with me the half of a ring me and Martha had chopped in two. We kept on
going, and by the time punkins and county fairs was getting ripe we was
into the upper left-hand corner of Ohio. And there Looey left us.
One day Doctor Kirby and me was walking along the main street of a
little town and we seen a bang-up funeral percession coming. It must of
been one of the Grand Army of the Republicans, fur they was some of the
old soldiers in buggies riding along behind, and a big string of people
follering in more buggies and some on foot. Everybody was looking mighty
sollum. But they was one man setting beside the undertaker on the seat
of the hearse that was looking sollumer than them all. It was Looey, and
I'll bet the corpse himself would of felt proud and happy and contented
if he could of knowed the style Looey was giving that funeral.
It wasn't nothing Looey done, fur he didn't do nothing but jest set
there with his arms folded onto his bosom and look sad. But he done THAT
better than any one else. He done it so well that you forgot the corpse
was the chief party to that funeral. Looey took all the glory from him.
He had jest natcherally stole that funeral away from its rightful owner
with his enjoyment of it. He seen the doctor and me as the hears
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