Quills Window | Page 5

skull split wide open.
That was back in 1830 or 1840. So, you see, when all of them ghosts
get together and begin scrapping over property rights, it's enough to
scare the gizzard out of 'most anybody that happens to be in the
neighbourhood. But I guess old man Quill was the first white man to
shuffle off, so it's generally understood that his ghost rules the roost.
Come on now, let's be moving. It's gettin' hotter every minute, and you
oughtn't to be out in all this heat. For the Lord's sake, you ain't going to
light another one of them things, are you?"
"Sure. It's the only vice I'm capable of enjoying at present. Being
gassed and shell-shocked, and then having the flu and pneumonia and
rheumatism,--and God knows what else,--sort of purifies a chap, you
see."
"Well, all I got to say is--I guess I'd better not say it, after all."
"You can't hurt my feelings."
"I'm not so sure about that," said the old man gruffly.
"How do you get up to that cave?"
"You ain't thinking of trying it, are you?" apprehensively.
"When I'm a bit huskier, yes."
The old man removed his cigar in order to obtain the full effect of a
triumphant grin.
"Well, in the first place, you can't get up to it. You've got to come down
to it. The only way to get to the mouth of that cave is to lower yourself
from the top of the rock. And in the second place, you can't get DOWN
to it because it ain't allowed. The owner of all the land along that side
of the river has got 'no trespass' signs up, and NOBODY'S allowed to
climb to the top of that rock. She's all-fired particular about it, too. The
top of that rock is sacred to her. Nobody ever thinks of violatin' it. All
around the bottom of the slope back of the hill she's got a white picket

fence, and the gate to it is padlocked. You see it's her family
buryin'-ground."
"Her what?"
"Buryin'-ground. Her father and mother are buried right smack on top
of that rock."
The young man lifted his eyebrows. "Does that mean there are a couple
of married ghosts fighting on top of the rock every night, besides the
gang down in the--"
"It ain't a joking matter," broke in the other sharply.
"Go on, tell me more. The monstrosity gets more and more interesting
every minute."
The old man chewed his cigar energetically for a few seconds before
responding.
"I'll tell you the story tonight after supper,--not now. The only thing I
want to make clear to you is this. Everybody in this section respects her
wishes about keeping off of that rock, and I want to ask you to respect
'em, too. It would be a dirty trick for you to go up there, knowin' it's
dead against her wishes."
"A dirty trick, eh?" said the young man, fixing his gaze on the
blue-black summit of the forbidden rock.
CHAPTER II
THE STORY THE OLD MAN TOLD

David Windom's daughter Alix ran away with and married Edward
Crown in the spring of 1894.
Windom was one of the most prosperous farmers in the county. His

lands were wide, his cattle were many, his fields were vast stretches of
green and gold; his granaries, his cribs and his mows, filled and
emptied each year, brought riches and dignity and power to this man of
the soil.
Back when the state was young, his forefathers had fared westward
from the tide-water reaches of Virginia, coming at length to the rich,
unbroken region along the river with the harsh Indian name, and there
they built their cabins and huts on lands that had cost them little more
than a song and yet were of vast dimensions. They were of English
stock. (Another branch of the family, closely related, remains English
to this day, its men sitting sometime in Parliament and always in the
councils of the nation, far removed in every way from the Windoms in
the fertile valley once traversed by the war-like redskins.) But these
Windoms of the valley were no longer English. There had been six
generations of them, and those of the first two fought under General
Washington against the red-coats and the Hessians in the War of '76.
David Windom, of the fourth generation, went to England for a wife,
however,--a girl he had met on the locally celebrated trip to Europe in
the early seventies. For years he was known from one end of the county
to the other as "the man who has been across the Atlantic Ocean." The
dauntless English bride had come unafraid to a land she had been
taught to regard as wild, peopled by