The ghost pointed out to Lucy Jencks a very inaccessible spot to be searched. It was the farther end of a loft over a shed, and had to be entered by a short ladder from a leanto. This loft was packed solidly with the accumulated debris of three-quarters of a century, portions of farm tools, poor old furniture, boxes, barrels, every old stuff and piece that was too mean even for the main attic, in which were poor enough relics. It had never been searched or sorted out since Ben Jencks came to the tavern, and I doubt whether Mrs. Jencks would have listened to a ransacking then but for one circumstance, the Jencks family were going to leave the Black House Tavern--and they really ought to know exactly what was in it ere they sold it with its contents. They had not been driven from the family home by this Indian spirit of dreams, but by a more powerful spirit--that of emigration. Neighbors and friends in Rutland and Worcester were going to Ohio--that strange new territory, and they would go too. A single dead Indian, and such a liar, too, seemed of but little account when they thought of the infinite bands of very live Indians in their chosen home.
[Illustration: Wright Tavern, Concord, Massachusetts.]
Mrs. Jencks and Lucy climbed the ladder to the loft, opened the single shutter, and let in a narrow dancing ray of dusty sunlight on the crowded desolation within. Lucy pointed between bars and barrels and bags, with slender white finger, at a large and remote box which a slender, strong, copper-colored hand had pointed out to her in her dreams. Her mother sternly sent her below to do her stent at quilt-piecing, and she tearfully and unwillingly descended. It was nearly an hour ere the strong arms of Mrs. Jencks had dislodged and repacked the unutterable chaos to the extent of reaching the box. Clouds of dust dimmed the air. She untied and removed a rotten rope that bound the box, which even in the dim litter looked like the upper half of a coffin. Within lay something swathed in linen bands and strips of old flannel--newspapers were then too precious for wrappings. She struck it, and there came a faint rattle of metal. The thought came to her of the description of a mummy which she had read a few nights before in the almanac. She paused; then twisted in and among the boxes to the head of the ladder. She could hear the sound of Perseverance singing a hymn. Perseverance Abbott was the "help," the sister of a farmer neighbor, and she was baking "rye and Injun" bread for the teamsters who would stop there at nightfall. Mrs. Jencks called down, "Persy, come here a minute!" "I'll tell her to come," piped up the shrill voice of Lucy, who was hovering at the base of the ladder and evidently meant to be "in at the death." Perseverance appeared, floury and serene, at the foot of the ladder. "I'll come," she said, in answer to Mrs. Jencks's appeal for assistance, "because I know you're scairt, and I ain't a-goin' to see Ben Jencks a-huntin for them Indian bones again. I've been dyin', anyway, to clear this out ever since I come here, an' this'll be the beginnin'." "Persy," said Mrs. Jencks, hesitatingly, "it seems to be something dead." "Dead!" answered her hand-maid, "I'll bet it's dead after layin' here forty, perhaps a hundred year!" An atmosphere of good sense and fearlessness seemed to halo her about; still both women unwrapped the heavy thing, the mummy, with care. A bare shining scalp came first to view. "It's a wig-block," shouted Perseverance in a moment, "yes, and here's curling irons and wire wig-springs."