rom your wife and boy, so
that they may escape, at least. Give yourself this claim to your wife's
gratitude, and she will be kind and forbearing."

"I don't know but you're more 'n half right, stranger," he replied, in
a more cheerful tone. "Fact is, I never thought on it that way. It's
lightened my heart a heap, tellin' you; an' if I'm not too broke an'
used-up-like, I'll try to foller your advice. I couldn't marry Rachel
now, if Mary Ann _was_ dead, we've been druv so fur apart. I don't know
how it'll be when we're _all_ dead: I s'pose them 'll go together that
belongs together;--leastways, 't ought to be so."

Here we struck the Bloomington road, and I no longer needed a guide.
When we pulled our horses around, facing each other, I noticed that the
flush of excitement still burned on the man's sallow cheek, and his
eyes, washed by probably the first freshet of feeling which had
moistened them for years, shone with a faint lustre of courage.

"No, no,--none o' that!" said he, as I was taking out my porte-monnaie;
"you've done me a mighty sight more good than I've done you, let alone
payin' me to boot. Don't forgit the turn to the left, after crossin'
Jackson's Run. Good-bye, stranger! Take good keer o' yourself!"

And with a strong, clinging, lingering grasp of the hand, in which the
poor fellow expressed the gratitude which he was too shy and awkward
to put into words, we parted. He turned his horse's head, and slowly
plodded back through the mud towards the lonely shanty.

On my way to Bloomington, I went over and over the man's story, in
memory. The facts were tolerably clear and coherent: his narrative was
simple and credible enough, after my own personal experience of the
mysterious noises, and the secret, whatever it was, must be sought for
in Rachel Emmons. She was still living in Toledo, Ohio, he said, and
earned her living as a seamstress; it would, therefore, not be difficult
to find her. I confess, after his own unsatisfactory interview, I
had little hope of penetrating her singular reserve; but I felt the
strongest desire to see her, at least, and thus test the complete
reality of a story which surpassed the wildest fiction. After visiting
Terre Haute, the next point to which business called me, on the homeward
route, was Cleveland; and by giving an additional day to the journey, I
could easily take Toledo on my way. Between memory and expectation the
time passed rapidly, and a week later I registered