s hired people together, and they alarmed the
neighborhood. At midnight a company of men had gathered before the
house, who should go and see what this remarkable story could mean.

"I always thought that the girl was rather strange," said Mrs. Miller.
"There may be some witchery or other about this Halloween."

Eliza, brave girl that she was, rode firmly towards the hill-side
grave-yard. As she came nearer to it the white horse did not appear to
be so large as when she first saw it. It was indeed a horse, a live one;
it had its forefeet on the lower limbs of an old apple-tree, which limbs
were bent downward toward the ground. It was eating apples off the high
branches, reaching its long neck up to pick them.

Horses are very fond of apples, and try in every way to get into
orchards when they have gained a taste for the fruit. They have been
known to unhead apple barrels, and they will eat apples from the lower
limbs of a tree, and reach high for the apple limbs after the fruit on
the lower limbs are gone. They like sour apples, and in this way become
cider drinkers.

Eliza stopped the wagon. She got out of it, and tied the horse to a tree
by the roadside. It was midnight--Halloween. She thought of English
merrymakings, of the games with apples, of the curious old stories and
songs that she had heard on such nights as this in her girlhood. She
hurried past the graves and came to the white horse, and said, "Jack!
Jack!" The horse seemed alarmed, let his raised body down to the ground,
snorted, and trotted away.

Eliza stood there all alone at that still midnight hour.

The moon rode clear in the heavens now; the woods were still, and around
her were graves. Did she believe in spirits? Yes, in her mother's, and
as soon as she thought of that she recalled that she had been sent for
the doctor, and that it was her duty to hurry on. Her heart would have
been light, but for her pity for Obed. He had indeed proved a coward,
but he had been wrongly taught and trained.

She rode to the doctor's house, roused the doctor, and brought him back
with her to the neighborhood, and left him at poor Mrs. Hopgood's, and
then rode home.

She was surprised to see a crowd of men before the door. Obed stood
among them. They awaited her coming in intense interest, but in silence.

She got down from the wagon, saying, "Some one will have to carry the
doctor back again."

"Who will go?" asked Mr. Miller.

There was no response. No o