o. He was thoroughly
good and reliable, but the wild creatures of the woods, in pursuit
of which he had spent so much of his life, had taught him a curious
gentleness and indirection, and to keep himself in the back-ground; he
was careful that you should not scent his opinions upon any subject at
all polemic, but he would tell you what he had seen and known. What he
had seen and known about spooks was briefly this:--In company with
a neighbor he was passing the night with an old recluse who lived
somewhere in these woods. Their host was an Englishman, who had the
reputation of having murdered his wife some years before in another part
of the country, and, deserted by his grown-up children, was eking out
his days in poverty amid these solitudes. The three men were sleeping
upon the floor, with Uncle Nathan next to a rude partition that divided
the cabin into two rooms. At his head there was a door that opened into
this other apartment. Late at night, Uncle Nathan said, he awoke and
turned over, and his mind was occupied with various things, when he
heard somebody behind the partition. He reached over and felt that both
of his companions were in their places beside him, and he was somewhat
surprised. The person, or whatever it was, in the other room moved about
heavily, and pulled the table from its place beside the wall to the
middle of the floor. "I was not dreaming," said Uncle Nathan; "I felt of
my eyes twice to make sure, and they were wide open." Presently the door
opened; he was sensible of the draught upon his head, and a woman's form
stepped heavily past him; he felt the "swirl" of her skirts as she went
by. Then there was a loud noise in the room as if some one had fallen
their whole length upon the floor. "It jarred the house," said he, "and
woke everybody up. I asked old Mr. ------ if he heard that noise. 'Yes,'
said he, 'it was thunder.' But it was not thunder, I know that;" and
then added, "I was no more afraid than I am this minute. I never was the
least mite afraid in my life. And my eyes were wide open," he repeated;
"I felt of them twice; but whether that was the speret of that man's
murdered wife or not I cannot tell. They said she was an uncommon heavy
woman." Uncle Nathan was a man of unusually quick and acute senses, and
he did not doubt their evidence on this occasion any more than he did
when they prompted him to level his rifle at a bear or a moose.

Moxie Lake lies much lower than Pleasant Pond, a