The cake and the rifle fell to the ground, and the postmaster's jaw dropped on its hinges. Cold chills ran up his back and blew like a wind through his hair, while the blood seemed to throb in his ears. He was powerless to speak. He could only gaze with his bulging eyes at the small figure which rose slowly from the roots of the great icicles and then stood motionless and black against the snow. It looked to be a figure, so small and far away in the uncertain moonlight, and yet it stood where no living man could possibly be. His first conviction was that he saw the spirit of the old man of the mountain, who, for one reason or another, was believed to rest uneasily in his grave; and when the small object began to thresh the air with its arms like the wings of a windmill, he had no further doubt that it was the dreadful "harnt" of whom 'Liz'beth had warned him. With a howl he turned and fled over the field in the direction of the office, and as he ran the owl resumed its dismal note--"Too-hoo, too-hoot." As many times as he fell down he clambered upon his feet again, and ran on, never daring to look back at the "harnt" waving its ghostly arms above the roots of the great icicles. He thought his time had come, for he had heard that men never lived who had once seen the dead; and all the time, as he ran, the mocking cry of the owl resounded through the woods. The postmaster was staggering and breathless when he reached his door, and once inside, he shoved the wooden bolt, and leaned against the table in the center of the room. Only a few glimmering coals lighted the ashes between the iron fire-dogs. Just enough moonlight struggled through the grimy south window to show the glazed boxes, holding a paper here and an uncalled-for letter there, while the unused places were stuffed with bunches of twine, and heaps of nails, and strings of onions, and quite the dustiest litter of odds and ends filled the compartments X, Y, and Z. As the old man raised his eyes and glared around the shadowy walls, there was something which caught a fleck of moonlight high up on the chimney, but that was only the perforated cross of the churn-dasher thrust between the logs. In the north window, over opposite to the letter-boxes, his eyes fell on a wide-mouthed bottle, from whose top two dead stalks of geraniums drooped over to the shoulders of the bottle, and then spread out to right and left against the glass. With a shiver of fear, he supported himself over to his arm-chair, and sank down with his back to the object, which reminded him of the "harnt" flinging its arms against the snow on the mountain.