BESIDE THE CAMP FIRE.
Both Manson's and Pullen's regiments were encamped along the edge of a
belt of pine woods, and after their creepy experience together on picket
duty, they naturally sought each other as often as possible. There is a
'witching romance lingering about a camp fire in the woods that
stimulates the imagination, and when these two newly made friends could
meet for an evening's visit beside theirs, many a tale of youthful
experience and boyish escapade was exchanged.
"Speaking of ghosts," said Manson, one evening, "I do not believe in
their existence exactly, and yet there is a strange fascination about
the idea that I can't understand. Now I do not believe we saw a man
walking on fog the other night, and yet I can't resist the desire to
hunt the matter out and discover what sort of an optical illusion it
was. I am not at all certain the man who took a shot at us was the one
we saw across the ravine, either. I had an experience once when I was
about nine years old, that, in a way, tainted my mind with the ghost
idea, and perhaps that is the reason why the possibility of seeing one
affects me in the way it does. A couple of miles from the farm where I
was reared there stood an old deserted ruin of a house known as the Tim
Buck place. It was hidden away behind hills and woods and reached from
the highway through a half-mile lane, thick grown with bushes. Here,
years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck,
who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It
was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from
a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever
lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to
the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being
haunted, and no one ever went near it after dark. A couple of 'coon
hunters told how they had taken refuge in it from a sudden shower at
night, but left in a hurry when they heard some one walking on the
chamber floor above. Some one else said they had seen a white figure
walking on the ridge-pole just at dusk. All this was current gossip in
the town, and believed by many.
"My parents had sense enough not to tell me, but when I was old enough
to be sent to the district school, I heard all this, and more, too; and
the worst of it was I believed all I heard. I had never been near the
house, but when I heard the stories, I got another boy for company and
went to look at it from the top of a near-by hill. As I grew older the
fascination of the place kept increasing, and one day it overcame my
fear and all alone I paid it a visit.
"The house was a ruin--roof fallen in, floor rotted away and pitched
into the cellar: only the walls were standing, and the beams and
rafters, like the ribs of a skeleton, still in place. I remember the
well-sweep was in the usual position, and seemed to me like a warning
finger pointing at the bleaching rafters. It took me a good half hour to
muster courage enough to go within ten rods of the ruin, but I finally
did, and at last, scared half to death, and trembling, found myself
peeping in at one window. It was dark in there and smelt queer, and I, a
nine-year-old boy, fully expected to see some new and horrible spook
appear at any moment. How long I stood there I never knew, for I forgot
all else except the belief that if I waited long enough I should see
something queer. I did, too, for all at once I saw in an inner room,
where a closet door stood half open, a white, bony hand reach out from
behind it, take hold, and seemingly shut that door from the inside! I
didn't wait any longer, you may be sure, and never stopped running until
I came in sight of home, two miles away!"
"And didn't you ever go back there?" said Pullen, "when you got older?"
"Oh, yes, I did, but not for a year after, and during that year I
dreamed of that house and one or a dozen skeleton hands, countless
times. Finally I mustered up spunk, went there one day all alone, set
the old ruin on fire, and then ran as fast as my legs would carry me to
a hilltop half a mile away, and stood and watched the fire. The place
was so hidden away no one saw it burn except me, and I never told for
fear of consequences."
"And did you ever outgrow the belief that you really saw a skeleton hand
open that door?" said Pullen, reaching forward to pick up an ember and
light the pipe he had just refilled.
Manson was silent for a few moments, as he lay resting his head on one
hand and watching the firelight play hide-and-seek among the pine boughs
overhead.
"No, to tell you the truth, Frank," he replied at last, slowly, "I do
not think I ever did. Of course, I know I did not see what I thought I
did, and yet I have not quite outgrown the scare. I won't admit that I
believe in ghosts, and yet the thought of them, owing perhaps to that
boyhood fright, has a sort of deadly fascination for me. I believe and
yet I do not believe, and if I were told I could see one by going
anywhere, no matter how grewsome the spook was, I could not resist
going."
"You ought to have lived where I came from," observed Pullen, looking
curiously at his comrade; "for about twenty miles from my home is an
island known as 'The Pocket,' that is fairly swarming with ghosts."
"Tell me about it," said Manson, suddenly interested.
"Well, it is a long yarn," replied Pullen, "but, from your make-up, the
island is just such a spot as you would enjoy visiting. As I told you
the other night, I was born and brought up on an island off the coast of
Maine, and when I was quite a lad I first heard about this island, and
that no one ever went there because it was haunted. I wasn't old enough
to understand what being haunted meant, but later on I did. They used to
tell about it being a hiding-place for smugglers before I was born, and
that a murder had been committed there and that some one in a fishing
boat had seen a man fully ten feet tall, standing on a cliff on it, one
night. Dad, who was a sea captain, used to laugh at all this, and yet
almost everybody believed there was some mystery connected with it.
Another thing, I guess, helped give it a bad name was the fact that a
ship was wrecked on it once, and no one discovered it until long after,
and then they found four or five skeletons among the rocks. Another
queer thing about this island that is really a fact is, that any time,
day or night, you can hear a strange, bellowing sound like that of a mad
bull, coming from somewhere on it. When there is a storm you can hear it
for miles away. The sound can't be located anywhere, and yet you can
hear it all the time. If you are one side, it seems to come from the
other, and go around to that side and it is back where you came from.
Inside the island is a circular pocket or walled-in harbor, like the
crater of a volcano, that is entered through a narrow passage between
two cliffs. Altogether it's a curious place, but as for ghosts--well,
I've been there many a time and never saw one yet. But then, I do not
believe in spooks, and perhaps that accounts for it. It's like the
believers in spiritualism, that can readily see their dead ancestors'
faces peering out of a cabinet, and all that sort of bosh, but I never
could. I'll bet," with a laugh, "that you could go to Pocket Island and
see ghosts by the dozen."
"I would like to go there," replied Manson quietly, "and if we ever get
home alive, I will."
"Come and make a visit, and I'll take you there," said Pullen; "that is"
(soberly) "if I ever go home."
The story-telling ceased while the two friends, each thinking of the
same thing, gravely watched the slowly fading fire.
"Come," said Pullen at last, "quit thinking about what may happen, and
tell me another ghost story. It's your turn now."
But Manson was silent, for the story-telling mood had fled, and his
thoughts were far away.
"Where are you now?" continued Pullen, studying his comrade's face.
"With some girl, I'll bet; am I right?"
"Yes," answered Manson slowly, "I was with some one just then, and
thinking of a fool promise I exacted from her before I left, and all
this ghost-story telling has made me realize what an injury I may have
done her by exacting that promise."
"Tell me," said Pullen, "I can sympathize with you, for I, too, have a
girl I left behind me."
"Well," came the answer slowly, "this girl has too much good sense to
believe in ghosts, and yet, you can't ever tell who does or does not
believe in them. The foolish part of it is that I took her to a lonely
spot away in the woods one day, before I left, and asked her to promise
me that in case I never came back she would visit this spot alone once a
year, on that same day, and if I was in spirit I would appear to her, or
at least if there was any such thing as spirit life, I would be there,
too. She is one of those 'true blue' girls would keep such a promise as
long as she lived, I think; and now you understand what a fool promise
it was."
"I can't dispute you," answered Pullen, and then they separated.