on arose from a
fisherman, who, coming into the harbor of a nightfall after a stormy
day, had, as he affirmed, beheld the old meeting-house all of a blaze
of light. Some time after, a tinker, making a short-cut from Stapleton
by way of the old Indian road, had a view of a similar but a much more
remarkable manifestation. This time, as the itinerant most solemnly
declared, the meeting-house was not only seen all alight, but a bell
was ringing as a signal somewhere off across the darkness of the water,
where, as he protested, there suddenly appeared a red star, that,
blazing like a meteor with a surpassing brightness for a few seconds,
was presently swallowed up into inky darkness again. Upon another
occasion a fiddler, returning home after midnight from Sprowle's Neck,
seeing the church alight, had, with a temerity inflamed by rum,
approached to a nearer distance, whence, lying in the grass, he had, he
said, at the stroke of midnight, beheld a multitude of figures emerge
from the building, crying most dolorously, and then had heard a voice,
as of a lost spirit, calling aloud, "Six-and-twenty, all told!" whereat
the light in the church was instantly extinguished into an impenetrable
darkness.

It was said that when Captain Obadiah himself was first apprised of the
suspicions entertained of the demoniacal possession of the old
meeting-house, he had fixed upon his venturesome informant so threatening
and ominous a gaze that the other could move neither hand nor foot under
the malignant fury of his observation. Then, at last, clearing his
countenance of its terrors, he had burst into a great, loud laugh,
crying out: "Well, what then? Why not? You must know that the Devil and
I have been very good friends in times past. I saw a deal of him in the
West Indies, and I must tell you that I built up the old meeting-house
again so that he and I could talk together now and then about old times
without having a lot of ----, dried, codfish-eating, rum-drinking
Yankee bacon-chewers to listen to every word we had to say to each
other. If you must know, it was only last night that the ghost of
Jezebel and I danced a fandango together in the graveyard up yonder,
while the Devil himself sat cross-legged on old Daniel Root's tombstone
and blew on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. And now" (here
he swore a terrific oath) "you know the worst that is to be known, with
only this to say: if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and Sow Point ag