CHAPTER VI.

His scheme was thwarted. The boy had come and gone in his absence,
all unaware of his proximity and the impending punishment so
narrowly escaped.

But when Andy Byers reached the tanyard and went to work, he said
nothing to Birt. He did not even allude to the counterfeit
apparition in the woods, although Mrs. Price's probable recovery was
more than once under discussion among the men who came and went,--
indeed, she lived many years thereafter, to defend her lucky
grandchildren against every device of discipline. Byers had given
heed to more crafty counsels. On the whole he was now glad that he
had not had the opportunity to make Birt and the hickory sprout
acquainted with each other. This would be an acknowledgment that he
had been terrified by the manufactured ghost, and he preferred
foregoing open revenge to encountering the jocose tanner's ridicule,
and the gibes that would circulate at his expense throughout the
country-side. But he cherished the grievance, and he resolved that
Birt should rue it. He had expected that Birt would boast of having
frightened him. He intended to admit that he had been a trifle
startled, and in treating the matter thus lightly he hoped it would
seem that the apparition was a failure.

However, day by day passed and nothing was said. The ghost vanished
as mysteriously as it had come. Only Mrs. Dicey, taking her bonnet
and apron and shawl from the chest, was amazed at the extraordinary
manner in which they were folded and at their limp condition, and
when she found a bunch of cockle-burs in the worsted fringes of the