Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost StoriesBierce, Ambrose
General
Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
Bierce, Ambrose
Ghost stories, American; Horror tales, American; Short stories, American
The night of November 20 was boisterous. A furious gale stormed across
the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet. Great trees
were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads. So wild a night
had never been known in all that region, but toward morning the storm had
blown itself out of breath and day dawned bright and clear. At about
eight o’clock that morning the Rev. Henry Galbraith, a well-known and
highly esteemed Lutheran minister, arrived on foot at his house, a mile
and a half from the Deluse place. Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in
Cincinnati. He had come up the river in a steamboat, and landing at
Gallipolis the previous evening had immediately obtained a horse and
buggy and set out for home. The violence of the storm had delayed him
over night, and in the morning the fallen trees had compelled him to
abandon his conveyance and continue his journey afoot.
“But where did you pass the night?” inquired his wife, after he had
briefly related his adventure.
“With old Deluse at the ‘Isle of Pines,’” {372} was the laughing reply;
“and a glum enough time I had of it. He made no objection to my
remaining, but not a word could I get out of him.”
Fortunately for the interests of truth there was present at this
conversation Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, a lawyer and _littérateur_ of
Columbus, the same who wrote the delightful “Mellowcraft Papers.”
Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr.
Galbraith’s answer this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the
exclamations that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly inquired:
“How came you to go in there?”
This is Mr. Maren’s version of Mr. Galbraith’s reply:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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