His Unquiet Ghost

His Unquiet Ghost, by

Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree) This eBook is
for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
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eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: His Unquiet Ghost 1911
Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23556]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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UNQUIET GHOST ***

Produced by David Widger

HIS UNQUIET GHOST
By Charles Egbert Craddock
1911
The moon was high in the sky. The wind was laid. So silent was the

vast stretch of mountain wilderness, aglint with the dew, that the tinkle
of a rill far below in the black abyss seemed less a sound than an
evidence of the pervasive quietude, since so slight a thing, so distant,
could compass so keen a vibration. For an hour or more the three men
who lurked in the shadow of a crag in the narrow mountain-pass, heard
nothing else. When at last they caught the dull reverberation of a slow
wheel and the occasional metallic clank of a tire against a stone, the
vehicle was fully three miles distant by the winding road in the valley.
Time lagged. Only by imperceptible degrees the sound of deliberate
approach grew louder on the air as the interval of space lessened. At
length, above their ambush at the summit of the mountain's brow the
heads of horses came into view, distinct in the moonlight between the
fibrous pines and the vast expanse of the sky above the valley. Even
then there was renewed delay. The driver of the wagon paused to rest
the team.
The three lurking men did not move; they scarcely ventured to breathe.
Only when there was no retrograde possible, no chance of escape, when
the vehicle was fairly on the steep declivity of the road, the precipice
sheer on one side, the wall of the ridge rising perpendicularly on the
other, did two of them, both revenue-raiders disguised as mountaineers,
step forth from the shadow. The other, the informer, a genuine
mountaineer, still skulked motionless in the darkness. The "revenuers,"
ascending the road, maintained a slow, lunging gait, as if they had
toiled from far.
Their abrupt appearance had the effect of a galvanic shock to the man
handling the reins, a stalwart, rubicund fellow, who visibly paled. He
drew up so suddenly as almost to throw the horses from their feet.
"G'evenin'," ventured Browdie, the elder of the raiders, in a husky voice
affecting an untutored accent. He had some special ability as a mimic,
and, being familiar with the dialect and manners of the people, this gift
greatly facilitated the rustic impersonation he had essayed. "Ye're
haulin' late," he added, for the hour was close to midnight.
"Yes, stranger; haulin' late, from Eskaqua--a needcessity."

"What's yer cargo?" asked Browdie, seeming only ordinarily
inquisitive.
A sepulchral cadence was in the driver's voice, and the disguised
raiders noted that the three other men on the wagon had preserved,
throughout, a solemn silence. "What we-uns mus' all be one day,
stranger--a corpus."
Browdie was stultified for a moment Then, sustaining his assumed
character, he said: "I hope it be nobody I know. I be fairly well
acquainted in Eskaqua, though I hail from down in Lonesome Cove.
Who be dead!"
There was palpably a moment's hesitation before the spokesman replied:
"Watt Wyatt; died day 'fore yestiddy."
At the words, one of the silent men in the wagon turned his face
suddenly, with such obvious amazement depicted upon it that it
arrested the attention of the "rev-enuers." This face was so individual
that it was not likely to be easily mistaken or forgotten. A wild, breezy
look it had, and a tricksy, incorporeal expression that might well befit
some fantastic, fabled thing of the woods. It was full of fine script of
elusive meanings, not registered in the lineaments of the prosaic man of
the day, though perchance of scant utility, not worth interpretation. His
full gray eyes were touched to glancing brilliancy by a moonbeam; his
long, fibrously floating brown hair was thrown backward; his receding
chin was peculiarly delicate; and though his well-knit frame bespoke a
hardy vigor, his pale cheek was soft and thin. All the rustic grotesquery
of garb and posture was cancelled by the deep shadow of a bough, and
his delicate face showed isolated in the moonlight.
Browdie silently pondered his vague suspicions for a moment "Whar
did he die at?" he then demanded at a venture.
"At his daddy's house, fur sure. Whar else?" responded the driver. "I
hev got what's lef' of him hyar