I've heard of these warnings afore now, ez comin' only to folks ez hear them for themselves alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it's the will o' God.

The idea is then--that--Spencer Tucker--WAS DROWNDED in that boat; the idea is"-- his voice was almost lost in a hoarse whisper--"that it was no living man that kem to me that night, but a spirit that kem out of the darkness and went back into it! No eye saw him but mine--no ears heard him but mine.

I reckon it weren't intended it should." He paused, and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes.

"The pie, you'll say, is agin it," he continued in the same tone of voice,--"the whiskey is agin it--a few cuss words that dropped from him, accidental like, may have been agin it.

All the same they mout have been only the little signs and tokens that it was him." But Mrs.Baxter's ready laugh somewhat rudely dispelled the infection of Patterson's gloom.