After learning what had occurred, Mr. Baron scoffed at their superstitions, sternly bidding all to go to their places and keep quiet.  “Perkins, you’ve been drinking beyond reason,” he warned his overseer in a low voice.  “Get back to your room quick or you will be the laughing-stock of everybody!  See here, you people, you have simply got into a panic over the howling of the wind, which happens to blow down from the graveyard to-night.”

“Neber yeared de win’ howl dataway befo’,” the negroes answered, as in a mass they drifted back to the quarters.

Perkins was not only aware of his condition but was only too glad to have so good an excuse for not searching the cemetery.  Scarcely had he been left alone, however, before he followed the negroes, resolved upon companionship of even those in whom he denied a humanity like his own.  In the darkness Chunk found an opportunity to summon Jute aside and say, “Free er fo’ ob you offer ter stay wid ole Perkins.  Thet he’p me out.”

Perkins accepted the offer gladly, and they agreed to watch at his door and in the little hallway.

“You mus’ des tie up dat ar dawg ob yourn,” first stipulated Jute.

“Why, whar in—­is the dog?  Hain’t yeared a sound from ’im sence the ’sturbance begun.”

“Dwags kyant stan’ spooks nohow,” remarked Jute.

“I’ve yeared that,” admitted Perkins, looking around for the animal.

“Thar he is, un’er yo’ baid,” said Jute, peeking through the doorway.

The miserable man’s hair fairly stood up when the brute was discovered stark and dead without a scratch upon him.  Recourse was again had to the jug, and oblivion soon followed.

CHAPTER XXXV

A VISITATION

There was no more sleep at the quarters that night, and never was the dawn more welcome.  It only brought a respite, however, for the impression was fixed that the place was haunted.  There was a settled aspect of gloom and anxiety on every dusky face in the morning.  Mr. Baron found his overseer incapacitated for duty, but the hands were rather anxious to go to work and readily obeyed his orders to do so.  They clung to all that was familiar and every-day-like, while their fears and troubled consciences spurred them to tasks which they felt might be a sort of propitiation to the mysterious powers abroad.  Zany was now sorry indeed that she had not gone with Chunk, and poor Aun’ Jinkey so shook and trembled all day that Mrs. Whately would not let her watch by Miss Lou.  Knowing much of negro superstitions she believed, with her brother and Mrs. Baron, that the graves on the place, together with some natural, yet unusual sounds, had started a panic which would soon die out.

When at last Perkins, shaky and nervous, reported the mysterious death of his dog, Mr. Baron was perplexed, but nothing more.  “You were in no condition to give a sane account of anything that happened last night,” he said curtly.  “Be careful in the future.  If you will only be sensible about it, this ridiculous scare will be to our advantage, for the hands are subdued enough now and frightened into their duty.”