A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from an electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident.  The sergeant paled and paused.  The captain strode quickly to his side and said sharply: 

“Call that name again.”

Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field of curiosity concerning the Unknown.

“Bennett Greene.”

“Here!”

All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line turned and squarely confronted each other.

“Once more,” commanded the inexorable investigator, and once more came—­a trifle tremulously—­the name of the dead man: 

“Bennett Story Greene.”

“Here!”

At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of an approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly, punctuating as with a full stop the captain’s exclamation, “What the devil does it mean?”

Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear.

“It means this,” he said, throwing open his coat and displaying a visibly broadening stain of crimson on his breast.  His knees gave way; he fell awkwardly and lay dead.

A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the congested front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not again under fire.  Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions, ever again signify his presence at one.

SOME HAUNTED HOUSES

THE ISLE OF PINES

For many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old man named Herman Deluse.  Very little was known of his history, for he would neither speak of it himself nor suffer others.  It was a common belief among his neighbors that he had been a pirate—­if upon any better evidence than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses, and ancient flintlock pistols, no one knew.  He lived entirely alone in a small house of four rooms, falling rapidly into decay and never repaired further than was required by the weather.  It stood on a slight elevation in the midst of a large, stony field overgrown with brambles, and cultivated in patches and only in the most primitive way.  It was his only visible property, but could hardly have yielded him a living, simple and few as were his wants.  He seemed always to have ready money, and paid cash for all his purchases at the village stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two or three times at the same place until after the lapse of a considerable time.  He got no commendation, however, for this equitable distribution of his patronage; people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual attempt to conceal his possession of so much money.  That he had great hoards of ill-gotten gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling was not reasonably to be doubted by any honest soul conversant with the facts of local tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of things.