All these things happened during the previous autumn, but Godfrey had not forgotten them. Don had then just returned from school; and the life he led on his father’s plantation was so monotonous, that he sometimes thought he could not exist much longer unless something happened to cheer him up a little. As nothing happened of its own accord, Don went to work to create opportunities to let off some of his surplus energy in a good hearty laugh; and to further this end, he made use of some of the numerous schoolboy devices he learned while at the academy. You will know how well he succeeded when we tell you that in less than a week after he began operations, the story got abroad that the general’s lane was haunted, and there was not a negro in the neighborhood who could be hired to pass through there after dark. Godfrey Evans himself would not do it. He always took to the fields. We do not say that Don passed his leisure hours in the most profitable manner, for we know he did not. We are only telling the story of his life, and telling it as it happened not so very long ago. That Don himself knew that he might be better employed, was proved by the fact that he did all this alone, not even taking Bert into his confidence. He little thought then that his love of mischief would one day be the means of getting him into a scrape the like of which he had never dreamed of, but such was the fact; and we must hasten on to tell how it was brought about. CHAPTER IX. OLD JORDAN’S “HAUNT.” Dan came back to his father with the money simply because he could think of no way of avoiding it that did not involve more personal risk than he cared to encounter. He took pains, however, to keep out his share, and gave Godfrey only two dollars and a half, accompanying it with the assurance that in his (Dan’s) estimation, his father had been guilty of a very mean trick, and one that he ought to be heartily ashamed of. “Didn’t ye tell me ye was satisfied?” asked Godfrey. “I know it, but I told ye so kase I was afeared if I said I wasn’t, I wouldn’t get none of the money. O, I know ye, pop, an’ I don’t see why ye can’t go to work an’ make some money of yer own, ’stead of ropin’ in on me an’ spilin’ my plans. If ye’d a kept outen the way, I’d a had ten dollars as easy as fallin’ off a log.”