hen she had
finished dressing me, Fred and I went out to play in the garden. It
was supper time in a little while and then, again, the woman winded the
shell and the men came up from the field. We sat down to eat with them,
as we had done at noon, and Uncle Eb consented to spend the night after
some urging. He helped them with the milking, and as I stood beside him
shot a jet of the warm white flood into my mouth, that tickled it so
I ran away laughing. The milking done, I sat on Uncle Eb's knee in the
door-yard with all the rest of that household, hearing many tales of
the wilderness, and of robbery and murder on Paradise Road. I got the
impression that it was a country of unexampled wickedness and ferocity
in men and animals. One man told about the ghost of Burnt Bridge; how
the bridge had burnt one afternoon and how a certain traveller in the
dark of the night driving down the hill above it, fell to his death at
the brink of the culvert.

'An' every night since then,' said the man, very positively, ye can hear
him drivin' down thet bill--jes' as plain as ye can hear me talkin'--the
rattle o' the wheels an' all. It stops sudden an' then ye can hear 'im
hit the rocks way down there at the bottom O' the gulley an' groan an'
groan. An' folks say it's a curse on the town for leavin' thet hole
open.'

'What's a ghost, Uncle Eb?' I whispered.

'Somethin' like a swift,' he answered, 'but not so powerful. We heard a
panther las' night,' he added, turning to our host. 'Hollered like sin
when he see the fire.'

'Scairt!' said the man o' the house gaping. 'That's what ailed him. I've
lived twenty year on Paradise Road an' it was all woods when I put
up the cabin. Seen deer on the doorstep an' bears in the garden, an'
panthers in the fields. But I tell ye there's no critter so terrible as
a man. All the animals know 'im--how he roars, an' spits fire an' smoke
an' lead so it goes through a body er bites off a leg, mebbe. Guess
they'd made friends with me but them I didn't kill went away smarting
with holes in 'em. An' I guess they told all their people 'bout me--the
terrible critter that walked on its hind legs an' lied a white face an'
drew up an' spit 'is teeth into their vitals 'cross a ten-acre lot. An'
putty soon they concluded they didn't want t' hev no truck with me. They
thought thin clearin' was the valley o' death an' they got very
careful. But the deer they kep' peekin' in at me. Sumthin' funny 'bout a
deer--they'r