He took no more notice of her and her mister, and senior, and mountsheer, and mynheer, than if he never heerd them titles, but jist larfed on.
"She stopped a minit, and looked at him full in the face, to see what he meant by all this ongenteel behaviour, when all of a sudden, jist as she moved one step nearer to him, she saw he was a dead man, and had been so long there, part of the flesh had dropt off or dried off his face; and it was that that made him grin that way, like a fox-trap.

It was the bone-house they was in.

The place where poor, benighted, snow-squalled stragglers, that perish on the mountains, are located, for their friends to come and get them, if they want 'em; and if there ain't any body that knows 'em or cares for 'em, why they are left there for ever, to dry into nothin' but parchment and atomy, as it's no joke diggin' a grave in that frozen region.
"As soon as she see'd this, she never said another blessed word, but jist walked off with the livin' man's pike, and began to poke her way down the mountain as careful as she cleverly could, dreadful tired, and awful frighted.
"Well, she hadn't gone far, afore she heard her name echoed all round her--Happy! Happy! Happy! It seemed from the echoes agin, as if there was a hundred people a yelling it put all at once.
"Oh, very happy,' said she, 'very happy, indeed; guess you'd find it so if you was here.

I know I should feel very happy if I was out of it, that's all; for I believe, on my soul, this is harnted ground, and the people in it are possessed.

Oh, if I was only to home, to dear Umbagog agin, no soul should ever ketch me in this outlandish place any more, _I_ know.' "Well, the sound increased and increased so, like young thunder she was e'en a'most skeared to death, and in a twitteration all over; and her knees began to shake so, she expected to go for it every minute; when a sudden turn of the path show'd her her husband and the poor squatter a sarchin' for her.
"She was so overcome with fright and joy, she could hardly speak--and it warn't a trifle that would toggle her tongue, that's a fact.