snake-like gliding toward a darkling coucha wife blood-boltered and sweltering? There is something.

It is in the air; the walls reek with it; the river's roar shouts it aloud. The wind whispers it with a dying sigh through the pines. The night bird shrieks it out. The brook murmurs it. The screech owl laughs it forth and revels in it. The unwholesome wings of the uncanny bat whisper it as they glide in and out by the open door in the dim firelight.

The firelight is but a faint flickering of dying embers, deepening the shadows in the corners and in the ragged roof, where no friendly star peeps in from on high. We can hear one another's breathings and heart beats. Something comes gliding in at the open door-something vague, mysteriously taking shape, seeming to diffuse itself and then fading out by all the cracks and crannies of the old cabin. Again it appears, lingers, embodies itself for a moment, and again fades into thin air and vanishes.

Three pistols click and the harsh noise

seems, to our quick senses, to fill all the wild gorge with useless noise. Three voices whisper as one: "Weapons are useless here." It was as a profanation, and yet it was only an instinctive clutching at something.

Whispering together, chilled, and terrorstricken, we agree to speak to it if it return; and the shuddering Panier, the bravest of our party, is appointed to the task.

Again it comes, again takes shape-a vague, misty something-" shape that shape has none"--transparent, but an embodied something, vaguely defined, but defined-a half human shape, with large, flowing drapery, dimly outlined upon the black background of darkness, by the faint flicker of lingering sparks in the fireplace of the huge chimney.

Fear, abject fear-which we do not even conceal from one another-has so keenly sharpened our senses that all sounds, the roar of the river, the dismal sighing of the wind, the howl of the wolf, the cries of night birds, the hoot of the great owl, the screech owl's eldritch laugh-all the solemn, lonely sounds

of night and solitude-seem to resound, redoubled, one deep, awful chorus of warning or of mockery.

"What do you seek here?" feebly whispers Panier, our chosen spokesman.

Instantly a commanding and a terrible figure defined itself in the center of the room, reached out a long, bony, white-clad arm and a skeleton, skinny finger; and a voice as sepulchral and deep as if it had come from the earth's profoundest bowels said: "I am thy Governor's ghost. I am the spirit of the Governor of North Carolina. Gentlemen,

it's a long time between drinks."

When I awakened at dawn out of a troubled sleep, Panier said: "Ramp, what the devil was the matter with you last night? Blanc and I had got up to tap the canteen-so wet and chilly we couldn't sleep. While we were drinking you fell into the dreadfullest nightmare I ever saw. We couldn't rouse you, and finally we gave you a drink and turned you over to dream it out."

The unmitigated liar! The liars! When they both know as well as I do that we all

three saw the ghost of the Governor of North Carolina. It has cured me of lodging in old ruined cabins hereafter. Wise men only need to learn once.

Of our journey to Maryville I will speak in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

The way was long, the night was cold,
The steeds they were infirm and old.

(Scott.)
E left the haunted house, glad that it

WTH

didn't rain during the night, pleased that the Governor of North Carolina paid his respects before we left the State, and glad to get away from a ruin which was only less lonely, forbidding, and desolate in the full morning light than by dusklight. The signboard tells us that it's six miles to Rocky Point. They don't spell well here, and signboard nomenclature would unsettle the old atlases; but they do make signs well in this country. Except at crossroads and forks of the road, where they're especially needed, the roads are well supplied with signboards. Throughout the Indian country we found the mileposts entirely primitive-an arrow pointing the way, with the number of miles notched on the post.