"Howd'y do, Sprigg?" "My name is Sprigg, then, sure enough?" "If it isn't I don't know the man I'm talking to; never did--stranger to me." "And is your name Ben Logan?" "If it isn't I don't know the man that's talking to you; never did--stranger to me." "And these two pretty people here, are they my father and mother, really, now?" "If they ain't so now, they never were so and never will be so, in this world." Delivered with much solemnity and some stress on "now" and "this." "And this place, where we all are, is it really grandpap's house, and no mistake?" "If it isn't you can't prove it by me. It's just where I left just such a house this morning, though it doesn't look much like the same place, either, with you wide awake in it, and old Pow-wow on his hind legs in it, and both so jolly." "And that little girl there, at the foot of my bed, is her name Bertha?" Here Ben paused before answering, regarding the person referred to with a look of some perplexity. "Well, she used to answer to that name, but here lately she don't answer to any when I call her; goes about like one in a traveling dream. There she stands, a-gazing at you with a far-off look in her eyes, as though you were on the other side of the Kentucky river, and not a living thing anear you. Bertha!" Here Ben elevated his voice a little. Bertha turned her eyes toward the speaker, though apparently with as little perception of his actual presence as though he were lying at the bottom of the river he had named. "There, you see how she does, and that's the way she's doing all the time. When she wakes up she won't know any more for a minute where she is than you did, before I told you. She's either in love, or fixing to be a ghost." What young Ben Logan meant by this concluding remark were hard to imagine; unless, indeed, he had in his mind the idea of a little angel, when he said "ghost." After receiving each answer, Sprigg would pause for a few moments to consider what he had heard and assure himself of its meaning before proceeding further. Now, after a somewhat longer pause than before, he put the startling question: "Ben, did you ever see Nick of the Woods?" To which he received the equally startling answer: