peered along the path.

The figure of a man, a presence if not a body--but whether clad in some
white stuff or naked the darkness would not allow him to determine--had
turned, and now, with a seeming painful gait, moved slowly from him.
"Great Heaven! can it be that the dead do walk?" He withdrew again the
hands which had gone to his eyes. The dreadful object passed between two
pillars and under the house. He listened. There was a faint sound as of
feet upon a staircase; then all was still except the measured tread of
Jean Poquelin walking on the veranda, and the heavy respirations of the
mute slumbering in the cabin.

The little Secretary was about to retreat; but as he looked once more
toward the haunted Louse a dim light appeared in the crack of a closed
window, and presently old Jean Poquelin came, dragging his chair, and
sat down close against the shining cranny. He spoke in a low, tender
tone in the French tongue, making some inquiry. An answer came from
within. Was it the voice of a human? So unnatural was it--so hollow, so
discordant, so unearthly--that the stealthy listener shuddered again
from head to foot, and when something stirred in some bushes near
by--though it may have been nothing more than a rat--and came scuttling
through the grass, the little Secretary actually turned and fled. As he
left the enclosure he moved with bolder leisure through the bushes; yet
now and then he spoke aloud: "Oh, oh! I see, I understand!" and shut his
eyes in his hands.

How strange that henceforth little White was the champion of Jean
Poquelin! In season and out of season--wherever a word was uttered
against him--the Secretary, with a quiet, aggressive force that
instantly arrested gossip, demanded upon what authority the statement or