His Unquiet Ghost | Page 4

hitched to the hedge of the graveyard, he recurred to his previous methods. The four men still within the in-closure, now busied in shovelling the earth back again into the excavation they had so swiftly made, covertly watched him as he skulked into the shadow of the wayside. The little "church-house," with all its windows whitely aglare in the moonlight, reflected the pervasive sheen, and silent, spectral, remote, it seemed as if it might well harbor at times its ghastly neighbors from the quiet cemetery without, dimly ranging themselves once more in the shadowy ranks of its pews or grimly stalking down the drear and deserted aisles. The fact that the rising ground toward the rear of the building necessitated a series of steps at the entrance, enabled the officer to mask behind this tall flight his crouching approach, and thus he ensconced himself in the angle between the wall and the steps, and looked forth in fancied security.
The shadows multiplied the tale of the dead that the head-boards kept, each similitude askew in the moonlight on the turf below the slanting monument To judge by the motions of the men engaged in the burial and the mocking antics of their silhouettes on the ground, it must have been obvious to the spectator that they were already filling in the earth. The interment may have seemed to him suspiciously swift, but the possibility was obvious that the grave might have been previously dug in anticipation of their arrival. It was plain that he was altogether unprepared for the event when they came slouching forth to the wagon, and the stalwart and red-faced driver, with no manifestation of surprise, hailed him as he still crouched in his lurking-place. "Hello, stranger! Warn't that you-uns runnin' arter the wagon a piece back yonder jes a while ago?"
The officer rose to his feet, with an intent look both dismayed and embarrassed. He did not venture on speech; he merely acceded with a nod.
"Ye want a lift, I reckon."
The stranger was hampered by the incongruity between his rustic garb, common to the coves, and his cultivated intonation; for, unlike his comrade Browdie, he had no mimetic faculties whatever. Nevertheless, he was now constrained to "face the music."
"I didn't want to interrupt you," he said, seeking such excuse as due consideration for the circumstances might afford; "but I'd like to ask where I could get lodging for the night."
"What's yer name?" demanded Barker, unceremoniously.
"Francis Bonan," the raider replied, with more assurance. Then he added, by way of explaining his necessity, "I'm a stranger hereabouts."
"Ye air so," assented the sarcastic 'Gene. "Ye ain't even acquainted with yer own clothes. Ye be a town man."
"Well, I'm not the first man who has had to hide out," Ronan parried, seeking to justify his obvious disguise.
"Shot somebody?" asked 'Gene, with an apparent accession of interest.
"It's best for me not to tell."
"So be." 'Gene acquiesced easily. "Waal, ef ye kin put up with sech accommodations ez our'n, I'll take ye home with me."
Ronan stood aghast. But there was no door of retreat open. He was alone and helpless. He could not conceal the fact that the turn affairs had taken was equally unexpected and terrifying to him, and the moonshiners, keenly watchful, were correspondingly elated to discern that he had surely no reinforcements within reach to nerve him to resistance or to menace their liberty. He had evidently followed them too far, too recklessly; perhaps without the consent and against the counsel of his comrades, perhaps even without their knowledge of his movements and intention.
Now and again as the wagon jogged on and on toward their distant haven, the moonlight gradually dulling to dawn, Wyatt gave the stranger a wondering, covert glance, vaguely, shrinkingly curious as to the sentiments of a man vacillating between the suspicion of capture and the recognition of a simple hospitality without significance or danger. The man's face appealed to him, young, alert, intelligent, earnest, and the anguish of doubt and anxiety it expressed went to his heart. In the experience of his sylvan life as a hunter Wyatt's peculiar and subtle temperament evolved certain fine-spun distinctions which were unique; a trapped thing had a special appeal to his commiseration that a creature ruthlessly slaughtered in the open was not privileged to claim. He did not accurately and in words discriminate the differences, but he felt that the captive had sounded all the gamut of hope and despair, shared the gradations of an appreciated sorrow that makes all souls akin and that even lifts the beast to the plane of brotherhood, the bond of emotional woe. He had often with no other or better reason liberated the trophy of his snare, calling after the amazed and franticly fleeing creature, "Bye-bye, Buddy!" with peals of his whimsical, joyous