it. Mose, being always at hand, was cuffed about more than any
negro on the place, but as far as I could make out, it only seemed to
increase his love and veneration for the Colonel. I don't believe the
situation could ever be intelligible to a Northern man.

So matters stood when I had been a month at Four-Pools. My vacation had
lasted long enough, but I was supremely comfortable and very loath to
go. The first few weeks of May had been, to my starved city eyes, a
dazzling pageant of beauty. The landscape glowed with yellow daffodils,
pink peach blossoms, and the bright green of new wheat; the fields were
alive with the frisky joyousness of spring lambs and colts, turned out
to pasture. It was with a keen feeling of reluctance that I faced the
prospect of New York's brick and stone and asphalt. My work was calling,
but I lazily postponed my departure from day to day.

Things at the plantation seemed to have settled into their old routine.
The whereabouts of the bonds was still a mystery, but the ha'nt had
returned to his grave--at least, in so far as any manifestations
affected the house. I believe that the "sperrit of de spring-hole" had
been seen rising once or twice from a cloud of sulphurous smoke, but the
excitement was confined strictly to the negro quarters. No man on the
place who valued a whole skin would have dared mention the word "ha'nt"
in Colonel Gaylord's presence. Relations between Rad and his father
were rather less strained, and matters on the whole were going
pleasantly enough, when there suddenly fell from a clear sky the strange
and terrible series of events which changed everything at Four-Pools.

CHAPTER IX

THE EXPEDITION TO LURAY

Toward eleven o'clock one morning, the Colonel, Radnor and I were
established in lounging chairs in the shade of a big catalpa tree on the
lawn. It was a warm day, and Rad and I were just back from a tramp to
the upper pasture--a full mile from the house. We were addressing
ourselves with considerable zest to the frosted glasses that Solomon had
just placed on the table, when we became aware of the sound of galloping
hoofs, and a moment later Polly Mathers and her sorrel mare, Tiger
Lilly, appeared at the end of the sunflecked lane. An Irish setter
romped at her side, and the three of them made a picture. The horse's
shining coat, the dog's silky hair and Polly's own red gold curls were
almost of a color. I believe the little witch had chosen the two on
p