One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a number of
the young people of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill Cemetery in a
wagon—if you have been there you will remember that the road to Greenton
runs alongside it on the south. They had been attending a May Day
festival at Greenton; and that serves to fix the date. Altogether there
may have been a dozen, and a jolly party they were, considering the
legacy of gloom left by the town’s recent somber experiences. As they
passed the cemetery the man driving suddenly reined in his team with an
exclamation of surprise. It was sufficiently surprising, no doubt, for
just ahead, and almost at the roadside, though inside the cemetery, stood
the ghost of Hetty Parlow. There could be no doubt of it, for she had
been personally known to every youth and maiden in the party. That
established the thing’s identity; its character as ghost was signified by
all the customary signs—the shroud, the long, undone hair, the “far-away
look”—everything. This disquieting apparition was stretching out its
arms toward the west, as if in supplication for the evening star, which,
certainly, was an alluring object, though obviously out of reach. As
they all sat silent (so the story goes) every member of that party of
merrymakers—they had merry-made on coffee and lemonade only—distinctly
heard that ghost call the name “Joey, Joey!” A moment later nothing was
there. Of course one does not have to believe all that.
Now, at that moment, as was afterward ascertained, Joey was wandering
about in the sage-brush on the opposite side of the continent, near
Winnemucca, in the State of Nevada. He had been taken to that town by
some good persons distantly related to his dead father, and by them
adopted and tenderly cared for. But on that evening the poor child had
strayed from home and was lost in the desert.
His after history is involved in obscurity and has gaps which conjecture
alone can fill. It is known that he was found by a family of Piute
Indians, who kept the little wretch with them for a time and then sold
him—actually sold him for money to a woman on one of the east-bound
trains, at a station a long way from Winnemucca. The woman professed to
have made all manner of inquiries, but all in vain: so, being childless
and a widow, she adopted him herself. At this point of his career Jo
seemed to be getting a long way from the condition of orphanage; the
interposition of a multitude of parents between himself and that woeful
state promised him a long immunity from its disadvantages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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