[Illustration: Clock with Painting of Pahquoique House.]
We must not be too contemptuous of this unprincipled Indian spirit. He simply belonged to a class of ghosts of whom Andrew Lang says complainingly that they have a passion for pointing out places and saying treasures or skeletons are buried within; whereas it always proves that nothing of the sort is ever found. There are liars among the living as well as of the dead, and Mrs. Jencks's Indian never said it was a treasure--he only hinted darkly at the buried thing being associated with some degradation or insult to the Indian race. The treasure was all in Ben Jencks's brain--and the brains of his friends. Mrs. Jencks's silence to her husband did not prevent her however from having several treasure-hunts alone by herself, after the Indian's renewed visits and pointing finger, for he changed nothing in his programme save the spot he indicated. She spent an entire day pulling and poking among the attic rafters. She rolled out several empty cider barrels from a distant cellar corner, and even dug a hole there secretly. Her husband at last discovered her mysteriously poking a hole down a disused well, and promptly had the well cleaned out; but of course nothing was found save the usual well contents, and thus the years rolled on.
One morning Lucy Jencks whimpered that the Indian had pulled her out of bed in the night and pointed out to her where to hunt. Lucy was nearly eleven years old; a clever, sharp, active little Yankee, who helped to shell peas and string beans and scour pewter, and who could knit famously and spin pretty well. This brought her naturally in the company of her elders, and she proved the influence of the ghost talk she had heard by repeating the Indian's words that "the derision of his ancient race, the degradation of his ancient customs, must be avenged." Derision and degradation are too big words for a little girl to use untutored, or for an Indian ghost either; and in truth they were not the precise words he had spoken at first. But Parson Pillsbury had been present at the digging under the Sapson apple tree, a piously sceptical but secretly interested spectator, and he had thus explained the somewhat broken "Injun-talk" which Mrs. Jencks reported. It proves the tractability and intelligence of this ghost of a heathen that he ever after used the words of the Puritan minister.