Little White was on his way to the meeting of the Board. He would have given all he dared spend to have staid away, for he felt both too fierce and too tremulous to brook the criticisms that were likely to be made. "I can't help it, gentlemen; I can't help you to make a case against the old man, and I'm not going to." "We did not expect this disappointment, Mr. White." "I can't help that, sir. No, sir; you had better not appoint any more investigations. Somebody'll investigate himself into trouble. No, sir; it isn't a threat, it is only my advice, but I warn you that whoever takes the task in hand will rue it to his dying day--which may be hastened, too." The President expressed himself "surprised." "I don't care a rush," answered little White, wildly and foolishly. "I don't care a rush if you are, sir. No, my nerves are not disordered; my head's as clear as a bell. No, I'm _not_ excited." A Director remarked that the Secretary looked as though he had waked from a nightmare. "Well, sir, if you want to know the fact, I have; and if you choose to cultivate old Poquelin's society you can have one, too." "White," called a facetious member, but White did not notice. "White," he called again. "What?" demanded White, with a scowl. "Did you see the ghost?" "Yes, sir; I did," cried White, hitting the table, and handing the President a paper which brought the Board to other business. The story got among the gossips that somebody (they were afraid to say little White) had been to the Poquelin mansion by night and beheld something appalling. The rumor was but a shadow of the truth, magnified and distorted as is the manner of shadows. He had seen skeletons walking, and had barely escaped the clutches of one by making the sign of the cross. Some madcap boys with an appetite for the horrible plucked up courage to venture through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before the house at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something which they but half saw--half a sight was enough--sent them tearing back through the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where they fairly dropped down, and cried: "Was it white?" "No--yes--nearly so--we can't tell--but we saw it." And one could hardly doubt, to look at their ashen faces, that they had, whatever it was. "If that old rascal lived in the country we come from," said certain Américains, "he'd have been tarred and feathered before now, wouldn't he, Sanders?" "Well, now he just would." "And we'd have rid him on a rail, wouldn't we?" "That's what I allow." "Tell you what you _could_ do." They were talking to some rollicking Creoles who had assumed an absolute necessity for doing _something_. "What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl, and you come out with horns and"-- "_Charivari_?" asked the Creoles. "Yes, that's it. Why don't you shivaree him?" Felicitous suggestion.