"No, sah; I don' dar take it," he said, solemnly, "an' I glad to give yo' back that othar dollar to please Mahs Duke, only I done turned it into a houn' dog what Ben sold me, and Chloe--she Ben's mammy--she got it from him, a'ready, an' paid it out fo' a pair candlesticks she been grudgen' ole M'ria a long time back, so I don' see how I evah gwine get it. But I ain't taken' no mo' chances, an' I ain't a risken' no mo' ghost signs. Jest as much obliged to yo' all," and he sighed regretfully, as Delaven repocketed the coin; "but I know when I got enough o' ghosts." Pluto had grace enough to be a trifle uneasy at the intense despondency caused by his fiction in what he considered a good cause. The garrulity of old Nelse was verging on childishness. Pluto was convinced that despite the old man's wonderful memory of details in the past, he was entirely irresponsible as to his accounts of the present, and he did not intend that the McVeigh family or any of their visitors should be the subject of his unreliable gossip. Pride of family was by no means restricted to the whites. Revolutionary as Pluto's sentiments were regarding slavery, his self esteem was enhanced by the fact that since he was a bondman it was, at any rate, to a first-class family--regular quality folks, whose honor he would defend under any circumstances, whether bond or free. His clumsily veiled queries about the probable result of Uncle Nelse's attack aroused the suspicions of Delaven that the party of hunters had found themselves hampered by the presence of their aged visitor, who was desirous of testing the ability of his new purchase, the hound dog, and that they had resorted to some ghost trick to get rid of him. He could not surmise how the shade of Margeret had been made do duty for the occasion, her subdued, serious manner giving the denial to any practical joke escapades. But the news Pluto brought of Mrs. McVeigh's homecoming dwarfed all such episodes as a scared nigger who refused to go into details as to the scare, and in his own words was "boun' an' sot" to keep his mouth shut in future about anything in the past which he ever had known and seen, or anything in his brief earthly future which he might know or see. He even begged Delaven to forget immediately the numerous bits of history he, Nelse, had repeated of the Loring family, and Delaven comforted him by declaring that all he could remember that minute was the horse race and he would put that out of his mind at once if necessary.