"And has been ever since the little old man died up thar all by hisself," chimed in little Miss Bennett. "I ain't a great believer in harnts," said the elder, "but if you viewed anything like fire up thar, hit certainly wa'n't built by human hands, for there ain't no possible way for a human to git there." "There's the bridge Josiah Woodring built," Sandy ventured to say. "I crossed over to hit myself once afore the war-time." "Hit fell into the gorge of its own weight an' rottenness, more 'n a year back," said the elder, "an' hit's certain that no man has set foot on the top of Whiteside since." The fresh stick, which was only a branch, burned up and threw a flickering light on the grave faces about the shadowy room, in the midst of a general silence which was broken by the harsh voice of the mistress of the house. "Hit's obleeged to be the harnts, an' comes 'long o' the bones o' the little old man not havin' had Christian burial up yonder." "You see," said the elder, "his takin' off wa'n't regular, bein' altogether unbeknownst, otherwise I'd 'a' seen he had gospel service said over him that would 'a' left him layin' easy in his grave." "Which hit stands to reason he can't do now," put in Mrs. Long, "under that heathen inscription they do say is writ on his headstone. If he really wanted to be forgot, he'd better left word with Jo-siah to bury him without so much as markin' the place; an' everybody knows that unmarked graves holds uneasy spirits." "Accordin' to that doctrine, Mis' Long," said the major, "whole regiments of harnts 'u'd be marchin' an' counter-marchin' over some battle-fields I know." "'T ain't them that has plenty o' company that gits lonely an' uneasy," replied the woman, very promptly, "but such as lays by themselves on the tops of the mountains or anywheres in the unknown kentry." "Old Whiteside hain't never brought luck to anybody that owned hit," said a piping voice from a niche behind the fireplace, where Granny White sat in her accustomed rocker. The old woman was the mother of the mistress of the house, and an authority far and near on all things supernatural. Her white frilled cap was just visible behind the stones of the jamb, and even the strangers listened with respect to what she had to say, in the ghostly silence and in the half-light of the dying embers. "I've lived in the shadder of hit for eighty year, an' ther' ain't many that's been atop o' old Whiteside. Arter Josiah built the bridge, the Hooper horned critters lay across the gorge one summer, an' two o' the best cows lost their calves. That must 'a' been in '50. Hay, Larkin, son--'50, wa'n't hit?" "That's true, Aunt Lucy," said the elder; "an' a great mystery hit was at the time. Some suspicioned that the little old man might 'a' killed 'em for meat, but such of us as went up found his cabin empty, an' we could no more find him than if he had been a harnt hisself."