hilarious children, as if asking of one another how they would like to
be human creatures, instead of a part of inanimate nature, or at best
the elusive spirits of the mountains.

There was nothing to be seen without but the mists.

"Thad tuk the filly, ye say fur true?" she asked, recurring to the
subject when supper was over.

Ben nodded. "I hopes ter conscience she'll break his neck," he declared
cruelly.

His mother took instant alarm. She turned and looked at him with a face
expressive of the keenest anxiety. "'Pears like to me ez the only reason
Thad kin be so late a-gittin' back air jes' 'kase it air a toler'ble
aggervatin' job a-fotchin' of dad home," she said, striving to reassure
herself.

"That air a true word 'bout'n dad, ennyhow," Ben assented bitterly.

His old grandfather suddenly lifted up his voice.

"This night," said the graybeard from out the chimney corner,--"this
night, forty years ago, my brother, Ephraim Grimes, fell dead on this
cabin floor, an' no man sence kin mark the cause."

A pause ensued. The rain fell. The pallid, shuddering mists looked in at
the window.

"Ye ain't a-thinkin'," cried the woman tremulously, "ez the night air
one app'inted fur evil?"

The old man did not answer.

"This night," he croaked, leaning over the glowing fire, and kindling
his long-stemmed cob-pipe by dexterously scooping up with its bowl a
live coal,--"this night, twenty-six years ago, thar war eleven sheep o'
mine--ez war teched in the head, or somehows disabled from good
sense--an' they jumped off'n the bluff, one arter the other, an' fell
haffen way down the mounting, an' bruk thar fool necks 'mongst the
boulders. They war dead. Thar shearin's never kem ter much account
nuther. 'Twar powerful cur'ous, fust an' last."

The woman made a gesture of indifference. "I ain't a-settin' of store by
critters when humans is--is--whar they ain't hearn from."

But Ben was susceptible of a "critter" scare.

"I hope, now," he exclaimed, alarmed, "ez that thar triflin' no-'count
Thad Grimes ain't a-goin' ter let my filly lame herself, nor nothin',
a-travelin' with her this dark night, ez seems ter be a night fur things
ter happen on ennyhow. Oh, shucks! shucks!" he continued impatiently,
"I jes' feels like thar ain't no use o' my tryin' ter live along."

Three of the children who habitually slept in the shed-room had started
off to go to bed. As they opened the connecting door, there suddenly
resounded a w