was that time Dan’l broke his leg, you know; they was takin’ a deck load of oak knees down by the packet, and one on ’em rolled down from the top of the pile and struck him just below the knee.  He was poling, for there wan’t a breath o’ wind, and he always felt certain there was somethin’ mysterious about it.  He’d had a good deal worse knocks than that seemed to be, as only left a black and blue spot, and he said he never see a deck load o’ timber piled securer.  He had some queer notions about the doin’s o’ sperits, Dan’l had; his old Aunt Parser was to blame for it.  She lived with his father’s folks, and used to fill him and the rest o’ the child’n with all sorts o’ ghost stories and stuff.  I used to tell him she’d a’ be’n hung for a witch if she’d lived in them old Salem days.  He always used to be tellin’ what everything was the sign of, when we was first married, till I laughed him out of it.  It made me kind of notional.  There’s too much now we can’t make sense of without addin’ to it out o’ our own heads.”

Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin were quite familiar with the story of the night when there were no candles and Mr. Thacher had broken his leg, having been present themselves early in the morning afterward, but they had listened with none the less interest.  These country neighbors knew their friends’ affairs as well as they did their own, but such an audience is never impatient.  The repetitions of the best stories are signal events, for ordinary circumstances do not inspire them.  Affairs must rise to a certain level before a narration of some great crisis is suggested, and exactly as a city audience is well contented with hearing the plays of Shakespeare over and over again, so each man and woman of experience is permitted to deploy their well-known but always interesting stories upon the rustic stage.

“I must say I can’t a-bear to hear anything about ghosts after sundown,” observed Mrs. Jake, who was at times somewhat troubled by what she and her friends designated as “narves.”  “Day-times I don’t believe in ’em ’less it’s something creepy more’n common, but after dark it scares me to pieces.  I do’ know but I shall be afeared to go home,” and she laughed uneasily.  “There! when I get through with this needle I believe I won’t knit no more.  The back o’ my neck is all numb.”

“Don’t talk o’ goin’ home yet awhile,” said the hostess, looking up quickly as if she hated the thought of being left alone again. “’T is just on the edge of the evenin’; the nights is so long now we think it’s bedtime half an hour after we’ve got lit up.  ’T was a good lift havin’ you step over to-night.  I was really a-dreadin’ to set here by myself,” and for some minutes nobody spoke and the needles clicked faster than ever.  Suddenly there was a strange sound outside the door, and they stared at each other in terror and held their breath, but nobody stirred.  This was no familiar footstep; presently they heard a strange little cry, and still they feared to look, or to know what was waiting outside.  Then Mrs. Thacher took a candle in her hand, and, still hesitating, asked once, “Who is there?” and, hearing no answer, slowly opened the door.