Part 11 (1/2)

”I'm on,” I declared. ”I don't dread ghosts near as much as I do some living folks I know.”

”Right you air,” chuckled the old man. ”If you say so we'll go right off now jest as sure as shootin'. We may be ghosts ourselves tomorrow.”

I a.s.sured him I was quite ready to encounter the ghost, so he jubilantly turned the machine from the road into a gra.s.s-grown lane.

We zigzagged for some distance and then got out and went on foot through a grove. The moon and the stars were half veiled by some light, misty clouds, so that the little house didn't show up very clearly, but as we came to the top of the hill, we saw something that shook even my well-behaved nerves.

From a window in the roof-room extended a white arm and hand, with index finger pointing threateningly and directly toward us.

My farmer friend turned quickly and fled toward the grove. I followed fleetly. ”What's your rush?” I asked, when I had overtaken him.

”I just happened to remember,” he explained gaspingly, ”that there's a pesky autoo thief in these 'ere parts. Bukins had his stole jest last night.”

The lights on his machine must have rea.s.sured him as to its safety when we emerged from the woods into the open, but he didn't lessen his speed. We got in the ”autoo” and soon said good-by to the lane. At one time I believed it was good-by to everything, but at last we gained the highway, right side up.

”Well!” I said, when we were running normally again on terra firma, ”that was some little old ghost,--beckoned to us to come right in, too!”

”You seen it then!” he exclaimed excitedly. ”I'm mighty glad I had an eyewitness. Folks wouldn't believe me.”

”They probably won't believe me, either,” I a.s.sured him. ”I am a lawyer.”

”You don't tell me! Well, it did jest give me a start for a minute.

I'd like to hev gone in and seen it nigh to, if I hadn't happened to think of this 'ere autoo. You see I ain't got it all paid for yet. I'm jest clean beat. You don't mind my takin' a leetle pull at a stone fence, do you?”

”I guess not,” I a.s.sented somewhat dubiously, however. ”That was a rail fence we took a pull at back in the lane, wasn't it? Of course, if we shouldn't happen to clear the stone fence as well as we did the rail fence, it might be more disastrous.”

”Oh, land!” he said with a cackling laugh, ”I ain't meanin' that kind of a fence. I mean the kind you--Say! You ain't one of them teetotalers, be you?”

”Only in theory,” I replied, ”but this stone fence drink is a new one on me. What's it like?”

He stopped the ”autoo” and pulled a bottle from an inner pocket.

”You kin taste it better than I kin tell it,” he declared. ”Take a pull--a condumned good one.”

I rarely imbibed, confining my indulgences to the demands of necessity, but I thought that the flight of Ptolemy, the ghostly encounter, and my Mazeppa--wild ride all combined to const.i.tute an occasion adequate to call for a bracer in the shape of a stone fence, or anything he might produce.

I took what I considered a ”condumned good one” from the bottle and it nearly strangled me, but I followed the aged stranger's advice to take another to ”cure the chokes” caused by the first one. On general principles I took a third and then reluctantly returned him the bottle.

”Here's over the moon,” he jovially exclaimed as he proceeded to make my attempt at a ”condumned good one” appear most n.i.g.g.ardly.

”May I ask,” I inquired when my feeling of nerve-tense strain had vanished, and I felt as if I were treading thin air, ”just what is in a stone fence?”

”Well, what do you think?” he asked slyly.

”I think the very devil is in it,” I replied.

”Well, mebby,” he admitted. ”It's two-thirds hard cider and one-third whisky. It's a healthy, hearting drink and yet it has a leetle come back to it--a sort o' kick, you know. But this is where I live,”

pointing to a farmhouse well back from the road, ”but I am goin' to run you on to your tavern though.”