“Wal, that ’are week there come on the master snow-storm. Of all the snow-storms that hed ben, that ’are was the beater; and I tell you the wind blew as if ’twas the last chance it was ever goin’ to hev. Wal, it’s kind o’ scary like to be shet up in a lone house with all natur’ a kind o’ breakin’ out, and goin’ on so, and the snow a comin’ down so thick ye can’t see ’cross the street, and the wind a pipin’ and a squeelin’ and a rumblin’ and a tumblin’ fust down this chimney and then down that. I tell you, it sort o’ sets a feller thinkin’ o’ the three great things,--death, judgment, and etarnaty; and I don’t care who the folks is, nor how good they be, there’s times when they must be feelin’ putty consid’able solemn.
“Wal, Cinthy she said she kind o’ felt so along, and she hed a sort o’ queer feelin’ come over her as if there was somebody or somethin’ round the house more’n appeared. She said she sort o’ felt it in the air; but it seemed to her silly, and she tried to get over it. But two or three times, she said, when it got to be dusk, she felt somebody go by her up the stairs. The front entry wa’n’t very light in the daytime, and in the storm, come five o’clock, it was so dark that all you could see was jest a gleam o’ some-thin’, and two or three times when she started to go up stairs she see a soft white suthin’ that seemed goin’ up before her, and she stopped with her heart a beatin’ like a trip-hammer, and she sort o’ saw it go up and along the entry to the cap’n’s door, and then it seemed to go right through, ’cause the door didn’t open.
“Wal, Cinthy says she to old Quassia, says she, ’Is there anybody lives in this house but us?’
“‘Anybody lives here?’ says Quassia: ’what you mean?’ says she.
“Says Cinthy, ’I thought somebody went past me on the stairs last night and to-night.’
“Lordy massy! how old Quassia did screech and laugh. ’Good Lord!’ says she, ’how foolish white folks is! Somebody went past you? Was’t the capt’in?’
“‘No, it wa’n’t the cap’n,’ says she: ‘it was somethin’ soft and white, and moved very still; it was like somethin’ in the air,’ says she. Then Quassia she haw-hawed louder. Says she, ‘It’s hy-sterikes, Miss Cinthy; that’s all it is.’
“Wal, Cinthy she was kind o’ ’shamed, but for all that she couldn’t help herself. Sometimes evenin’s she’d be a settin’ with the cap’n, and she’d think she’d hear somebody a movin’ in his room overhead; and she knowed it wa’n’t Quassia, ’cause Quassia was ironin’ in the kitchen. She took pains once or twice to find out that ’are.