“Four years passed, and I had returned from the war. What changes had taken place is not my intention to relate only to speak of the mill. The fears of the mountaineers had caused it to be abandoned. The one whom I had designed to work it had wholly disregarded my orders. By a train of petty circumstances connected with this man’s refusal to run the mill, together with the superstitious ideas of the people, all the mountaineers began to take their grain to the lower “corn-cracker.” This course was not adopted by all until several of the more venturesome ones had actual, unexplainable encounters with ghosts at my mill. “A few days after my return I went up to look at the forsaken place. I found the underbrush rather heavy, fair-sized trees springing up, the old ash lying undisturbed where it had been struck down, and consequently the old road was lost. Everything within the mill, though, was in excellent condition. What struck me as curious was that the mill appeared never to have stopped running; for the stones were not mossed in the least, but on the contrary were still white with flour. The floor was also white, and a close observer would at once have declared that a supply of wheat had been ground there that week. “‘Jist so,’ said an old neighbor who was with me. ‘In course these hyar stones never quit runnin’ at night, ez I tole yer; but hit ain’t no humin bein’s ez runs ’em. Many a night I’ve cum up the new road over yander, an’ stopped an’ shivered as I heered the ole wheel splashin’ round, seed lights an’ seed yer brother standin’ right hyar at this winder, I’ll swar! Why didn’t I sarch into the matter? Didn’t I though! But the hants all fled when I cum near, and nuthin’ but an owl hooted overhead; an’ one night I war knocked flat by some devil unseen, an’ next thing I knowed I woke up a mile from hyar. Ye don’t catch me foolin’ round sich things.’ “He went on to tell how the meal, which he had ground in the daytime, had made persons sick, and also helped to stop business. That night I determined to watch the ghostly millers in their midnight toils. A man named Bun volunteered to stay with me. Just after dark we came up here and ensconced ourselves in a close thicket near the fall, and about fifty feet from the mill. The hours passed by monotonously. It was late in the night, when suddenly, above the dull roar of the fall, I heard an owl’s hoot up the river road. This would not have attracted my attention, had not another hoot sounded at once from down the road, and then another came from just before the mill. Nothing further was heard to these calls, which I deemed were signals; but, a few moments after, a light flared up in the mill, and through the unboarded side we saw two figures in white garments. “‘Let’s steal out of this,’ whispered Bun, in a trembling voice. ‘Didn’t I say it war ha’nted?’