her hand, leaving the mark of skeleton fingers there, so that she always
kept it gloved afterward. Then there was the tale of the two men of
Detroit who were crushed by a falling tree: the married one, who was not
fatally hurt, begged his mate to call his wife, as soon as his soul was
free, and the woman, hearing the mournful voice at her door, as the
spirit passed on its way to space, ran out and rescued her husband from
his plight. She told, too, of the _feu follet_, or will-o'-the-wisp, that
led a girl on Grosse Isle to the swamp where her lover was engulfed in
mire and enabled her to rescue him. There was Grand'mere Duchene,
likewise, who worked at her spinning-wheel for many a night after death,
striking fear to her son's heart, by its droning, because he had not
bought the fifty masses for the repose of her soul, but when he had
fulfilled the promise she came no more. Another yarn was about the
ghost-boat of hunter Sebastian that ascends the straits once in seven
years, celebrating his return, after death, in accordance with the
promise made to Zoe, his betrothed, that--dead or alive--he would return
to her from the hunt at a certain time.

To all this Kennette turned the ear of scorning. "Bah!" she cried. "I
don't believe your stories. I don't believe in your hell and your
purgatory. If you die first, come back. If I should, and I can, I will
come. Then we may know whether there is another world."

The bargain was made to this effect, but the women did not get on well
together, and soon Kennette had an open quarrel with her lodger that
ended by her declaring that she never could forgive her, but that she
would hold her to her after-death compact. The lodger died, and while
talking of her death at the house of a neighbor a boy, who had arrived
from town, casually asked Kennette--knowing her saving ways--why she had
left the light burning in her house. Grasping a poker, she set off at
once to punish the intruder who had dared to enter in her absence, but
when she arrived there was no light. On several evenings the light was
reported by others, but as she was gadding in the neighborhood she never
saw it until, one night, resolved to see for herself, she returned early,
softly entered at the back door, and went to bed. Hardly had she done so
when she saw a light coming up-stairs. Sitting bolt upright in bed she
waited. The light came up noiselessly and presently stood in the
room--not a lantern or candle, but a whit