When the building was completely deserted, and the swallows, half in doubt, had returned to their perch under its eaves, a sound, which could scarcely have been mistaken for aught but the hooting of an owl, broke the stillness of the neighboring forest, and was quickly replied to at the distance of perhaps a furlong in the opposite direction. The echoes awakened by these signals were still busy at hide-and-seek with the shadows in the old building, when two forms, clad in long robes and wearing high-peaked caps, crossed the plateau to its threshold, and giving way to an involuntary chuckle as they gazed first upon the wrecked surroundings, passed to its inner precincts. Perhaps a full minute elapsed before they reappeared at the entrance way, and, being joined here by a companion with two led horses, they placed their bags of cow-bones on the latter, and, mounting, galloped swiftly into the darkness. CHAPTER VI. GHOST FEATURE OF THE MOVEMENT. ITS PHILOSOPHY. Contrasted Views of the Organization inspired by its Dealings with the Public--Its Political Bearing--Its _Objects_ not deemed Harmful to Society--New England Transcendentalists, and the Ponderous Science which they put before the World under the Title of "Negropholism"--The Colored Man in the South--Kindly Feeling for the Race cherished by Native Southerners--Households Presided over by Colored Matrons--Superstitious Tendencies of Cuffey--One of the Conditions of his Tropical Nativity--Heathenish Lapses--His Ideas about "Ghosts," and the Realm which they Inhabit--Interviewing the former--Spook Kinsfolk--He holds them in the highest Veneration--The ideal "Uncle Tom's Cabin"--Wherein it was a Failure--The "Infantile Sex" and their Greed for Ghost-lore--Fighting their way through Legions of Shadowy Foes to their "Curtained Rest"--Young Professors of the Spiritual Science--Painful Reminiscences--Use to which the Aged Patriarch, or Beldam, as the Case might be, put their Prerogative--Talent for relating Ghost Stories--The Young White Men of the South trained up in this School--Insight into Negro Character obtained therefrom--K. K. K. Affectation of the Supernatural based upon the latter.