Mrs. Thacher shook her head two or three times with a dismal expression, and made no answer.  She had pushed back the droning wool-wheel which she had been using, and had taken her knitting from the shelf by the clock and seated herself contentedly, while Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin had each produced a blue yarn stocking from a capacious pocket, and the shining steel needles were presently all clicking together.  One knitter after another would sheathe the spare needle under her apron strings, while they asked each other’s advice from time to time about the propriety of “narrerin’” or whether it were not best to “widden” according to the progress their respective stockings had made.  Mrs. Thacher had lighted an extra candle, and replenished the fire, for the air was chillier since the sun went down.  They were all sure of a coming change of weather, and counted various signs, Mrs. Thacher’s lowness of spirits among the number, while all three described various minor maladies from which they had suffered during the day, and of which the unseasonable weather was guilty.

“I can’t get over the feeling that we are watchin’ with somebody,” said Mrs. Martin after a while, moved by some strange impulse and looking over her shoulder, at which remark Mrs. Thacher glanced up anxiously.  “Something has been hanging over me all day,” said she simply, and at this the needles clicked faster than ever.

“We’ve been taking rather a low range,” suggested Mrs. Jake.  “We shall get to telling over ghost stories if we don’t look out, and I for one shall be sca’t to go home.  By the way, I suppose you have heard about old Billy Dow’s experience night afore last, Mis’ Thacher?”

“John being away, I ain’t had nobody to fetch me the news these few days past,” said the hostess.  “Why what’s happened to Billy now?”

The two women looked at each other:  “He was getting himself home as best he could,—­he owned up to having made a lively evenin’ of it,—­and I expect he was wandering all over the road and didn’t know nothin’ except that he was p’inted towards home, an’ he stepped off from the high bank this side o’ Dunnell’s, and rolled down, over and over; and when he come to there was a great white creatur’ a-standin’ over him, and he thought ’t was a ghost.  ’T was higher up on the bank than him, and it kind of moved along down’s if ’t was coming right on to him, and he got on to his knees and begun to say his Ten Commandments fast’s he could rattle ’em out.  He got ’em mixed up, and when the boys heard his teeth a-chattering, they began to laugh and he up an’ cleared.  Dunnell’s boys had been down the road a piece and was just coming home, an’ ’t was their old white hoss that had got out of the barn, it bein’ such a mild night, an’ was wandering off.  They said to Billy that’t wa’n’t everybody could lay a ghost so quick as he could, and they didn’t ’spose he had the means so handy.”