“Yes. That ghost was the terror of all the children and hired people. Rachel was an old maiden lady. She used to have charge of the balm bed, the sage bed, and the pepper bed, and the dried apples and red peppers, and sold them to get money for the church and her clothes. She ground the red peppers in the garret, and to keep the pepper dust from burning out her eyes, she used a calash, which was a great bonnet, with whalebone ribs, that stood up from the head all around as though it were hung on the air, and over the calash she wore a long green veil. She put over her body a long white nightgown; and when we went up to the top of the garret stairs to see her pound, she looked kind of awful and scary, like a picture in the old ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ When I heard that she had come back to haunt the old herb-room in the garret, and I pictured in my mind how she used to look, it fairly made my flesh creep. Of all ghosts I wouldn’t have liked to see old Rachel with her calash like a shay’s top and her pound, pound, pound. She used to punish me when I was a boy by snapping her thumb and finger on the top of my head. I remember it all as though it were yesterday. I once went up to the herb-room to get some—” [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO EGYPTIAN THEATRE, STREET IN CAIRO.] “Not herbs, my good friend,” said Susan. “No; some preserves or cake. They used to keep the goodies there, and I had been going there pretty often in a quiet way, when I felt, just as I was bending over the marmalade-jar, a snap on the top of my head, and I looked up suddenly, and there was the most awful sight that I ever saw,—old Rachael herself, in her white nightgown, calash, and all. I scooted after the first glance, and rolled over and over down the first flight of stairs, and leaped down the second. No barn or chimney swift could have gone quicker. I didn’t sleep much for a long time after that, and I never dared to tell the story, because I was at the marmalade-jar when she appeared. I never told it to anybody until after I went away. “I used to lay awake until morning, and when I heard the wings of the swallows in the chimney my heart would beat like a trip-hammer, for I thought it was old Rachael and her pepper-mill. When the fowls crowed for day I would feel safe again, for no ghost ever could appear after the cock crew in the morning, so the old folks said. Susan, what do you think that ghost was?” “Oh, my good friend, how can I tell it now? I think—oh, I know it was poor old grandmother! She scared Martin once in that way to keep him—oh, how can I say it?—to keep him from getting at her plum-cake.” “How do you know?” “She told me so, and told me never to tell.” The two looked at each other. “That accounts for it. I always thought it was kind o’ strange that they should have whalebone calashes in another world.”