Chapter 2

Within a
half-mile of it he met Bushrod Albro, a former playfellow and schoolmate,
who greeted him warmly.

“I am going to visit my home,” said the soldier.

The other looked at him rather sharply, but said nothing.

“I know,” continued Lassiter, “that my folks have not changed, but—”

“There have been changes,” Albro interrupted—“everything changes. I’ll
go with you if you don’t mind. We can talk as we go.”

But Albro did not talk.

Instead of a house they found only fire-blackened foundations of stone,
enclosing an area of compact ashes pitted by rains.

Lassiter’s astonishment was extreme.

“I could not find the right way to tell you,” said Albro. “In the fight
a year ago your house was burned by a Federal shell.”

“And my family—where are they?”

“In Heaven, I hope. All were killed by the shell.”

A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE

CONNECTING Readyville and Woodbury was a good, hard turnpike nine or ten
miles long. Readyville was an outpost of the Federal army at
Murfreesboro; Woodbury had the same relation to the Confederate army at
Tullahoma. For months after the big battle at Stone River these outposts
were in constant quarrel, most of the trouble occurring, naturally, on
the turnpike mentioned, between detachments of cavalry. Sometimes the
infantry and artillery took a hand in the game by way of showing their
good-will.

One night a squadron of Federal horse commanded by Major Seidel, a
gallant and skillful officer, moved out from Readyville on an uncommonly
hazardous enterprise requiring secrecy, caution and silence.

Passing the infantry pickets, the detachment soon afterward approached
two cavalry videttes staring hard into the darkness ahead. There should
have been three.

“Where is your other man?” said the major. “I ordered Dunning to be here
to-night.”

“He rode forward, sir,” the man replied. “There was a little firing
afterward, but it was a long way to the front.”

“It was against orders and against sense for Dunning to do that,” said
the officer, obviously vexed. “Why did he ride forward?”

“Don’t know, sir; he seemed mighty restless. Guess he was skeered.”

When this remarkable reasoner and his companion had been absorbed into
the expeditionary force, it resumed its advance. Conversation was
forbidden; arms and accouterments were denied the right to rattle. The
horses’ tramping was all that could be heard and the movement was slow in
order to have as little as possible of that. It was after midnight and
pretty dark, although there was a bit of moon somewhere behind the masses
of cloud.

Two or three miles along, the head of the column approached a dense
forest of cedars bordering the road on both sides. The major commanded a
halt by merely halting, and, evidently himself a bit “skeered,” rode on
alone to reconnoiter. He was followed, however, by his adjutant and
three troopers, who remained a little distance behind and, unseen by him,
saw all that occurred.

After riding about a hundred yards toward the forest, the major suddenly
and sharply reined in his horse and sat motionless in the saddle. Near
the side of the road, in a little open space and hardly ten paces away,
stood the figure of a man, dimly visible and as motionless as he. The
major’s first feeling was that of satisfaction in having left his
cavalcade behind; if this were an enemy and should escape he would have
little to report. The expedition was as yet undetected.

Some dark object was dimly discernible at the man’s feet; the officer
could not make it out. With the instinct of the true cavalryman and a
particular indisposition to the discharge of firearms, he drew his saber.
The man on foot made no movement in answer to the challenge. The
situation was tense and a bit dramatic. Suddenly the moon burst through
a rift in the clouds and, himself in the shadow of a group of great oaks,
the horseman saw the footman clearly, in a patch of white light. It was
Trooper Dunning, unarmed and bareheaded. The object at his feet resolved
itself into a dead horse, and at a right angle across the animal’s neck
lay a dead man, face upward in the moonlight.

“Dunning has had the fight of his life,” thought the major, and was about
to ride forward. Dunning raised his hand, motioning him back with a
gesture of warning; then, lowering the arm, he pointed to the place where
the road lost itself in the blackness of the cedar forest.

The major understood, and turning his horse rode back to the little group
that had followed him and was already moving to the rear in fear of his
displeasure, and so returned to the head of his command.

“Dunning is just ahead there,” he said to the captain of his leading
company. “He has killed his man and will have something to report.”

Right patiently they waited, sabers drawn, but Dunning did not come. In
an hour the day broke and the whole force moved cautiously forward, its
commander not altogether satisfied with his faith in Private Dunning.
The expedition had failed, but something remained to be done.

In the little open space off the road they found the fallen horse. At a
right angle across the animal’s neck face upward, a bullet in the brain,
lay the body of Trooper Dunning, stiff as a statue, hours dead.

Examination disclosed abundant evidence that within a half-hour the cedar
forest had been occupied by a strong force of Confederate infantry—an
ambuscade.

TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS

IN the spring of the year 1862 General Buell’s big army lay in camp,
licking itself into shape for the campaign which resulted in the victory
at Shiloh. It was a raw, untrained army, although some of its fractions
had seen hard enough service, with a good deal of fighting, in the
mountains of Western Virginia, and in Kentucky. The war was young and
soldiering a new industry, imperfectly understood by the young American
of the period, who found some features of it not altogether to his
liking. Chief among these was that essential part of discipline,
subordination. To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating fallacy
that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority is not
easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his “green and
salad days” is among the worst known. That is how it happened that one
of Buell’s men, Private Bennett Story Greene, committed the indiscretion
of striking his officer. Later in the war he would not have done that;
like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would have “seen him damned” first. But
time for reformation of his military manners was denied him: he was
promptly arrested on complaint of the officer, tried by court-martial and
sentenced to be shot.

“You might have thrashed me and let it go at that,” said the condemned
man to the complaining witness; “that is what you used to do at school,
when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good as you. Nobody saw me
strike you; discipline would not have suffered much.”

“Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that,” said the lieutenant.
“Will you forgive me? That is what I came to see you about.”

There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door of the
guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained that the time
allowed for the interview had expired. The next morning, when in the
presence of the whole brigade Private Greene was shot to death by a squad
of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley turned his back upon the sorry
performance and muttered a prayer for mercy, in which himself was
included.

A few weeks afterward, as Buell’s leading division was being ferried over
the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant’s beaten army, night was
coming on, black and stormy. Through the wreck of battle the division
moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the enemy, who had withdrawn a
little to reform his lines. But for the lightning the darkness was
absolute. Never for a moment did it cease, and ever when the thunder did
not crack and roar were heard the moans of the wounded among whom the men
felt their way with their feet, and upon whom they stumbled in the gloom.
The dead were there, too—there were dead a-plenty.

In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance had
paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle, and
skirmishers had been thrown forward, word was passed along to call the
roll. The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley’s company stepped to the
front and began to name the men in alphabetical order. He had no written
roll, but a good memory. The men answered to their names as he ran down
the alphabet to G.

“Gorham.”

“Here!”

“Grayrock.”

“Here!”

The sergeant’s good memory was affected by habit:

“Greene.”

“Here!”

The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable!

A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from an
electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident. The
sergeant paled and paused. The captain strode quickly to his side and
said sharply:

“Call that name again.”

Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field
of curiosity concerning the Unknown.

“Bennett Greene.”

“Here!”

All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line
turned and squarely confronted each other.

“Once more,” commanded the inexorable investigator, and once more came—a
trifle tremulously—the name of the dead man:

“Bennett Story Greene.”

“Here!”

At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond
the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of an
approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly,
punctuating as with a full stop the captain’s exclamation, “What the
devil does it mean?”

Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear.

“It means this,” he said, throwing open his coat and displaying a visibly
broadening stain of crimson on his breast. His knees gave way; he fell
awkwardly and lay dead.

A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the
congested front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not
again under fire. Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions,
ever again signify his presence at one.

SOME HAUNTED HOUSES

THE ISLE OF PINES

FOR many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old man
named Herman Deluse. Very little was known of his history, for he would
neither speak of it himself nor suffer others. It was a common belief
among his neighbors that he had been a pirate—if upon any better evidence
than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses, and ancient flintlock
pistols, no one knew. He lived entirely alone in a small house of four
rooms, falling rapidly into decay and never repaired further than was
required by the weather. It stood on a slight elevation in the midst of
a large, stony field overgrown with brambles, and cultivated in patches
and only in the most primitive way. It was his only visible property,
but could hardly have yielded him a living, simple and few as were his
wants. He seemed always to have ready money, and paid cash for all his
purchases at the village stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two
or three times at the same place until after the lapse of a considerable
time. He got no commendation, however, for this equitable distribution
of his patronage; people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual
attempt to conceal his possession of so much money. That he had great
hoards of ill-gotten gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling
was not reasonably to be doubted by any honest soul conversant with the
facts of local tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of
things.

On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead body
was discovered on the 10th, and physicians testified that death had
occurred about twenty-four hours previously—precisely how, they were
unable to say; for the _post-mortem_ examination showed every organ to be
absolutely healthy, with no indication of disorder or violence.
According to them, death must have taken place about noonday, yet the
body was found in bed. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was that he
“came to his death by a visitation of God.” The body was buried and the
public administrator took charge of the estate.

A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known about the
dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises
by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded. The administrator
locked up the house against the time when the property, real and
personal, should be sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, the
expenses of the sale.

The night of November 20 was boisterous. A furious gale stormed across
the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet. Great trees
were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads. So wild a night
had never been known in all that region, but toward morning the storm had
blown itself out of breath and day dawned bright and clear. At about
eight o’clock that morning the Rev. Henry Galbraith, a well-known and
highly esteemed Lutheran minister, arrived on foot at his house, a mile
and a half from the Deluse place. Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in
Cincinnati. He had come up the river in a steamboat, and landing at
Gallipolis the previous evening had immediately obtained a horse and
buggy and set out for home. The violence of the storm had delayed him
over night, and in the morning the fallen trees had compelled him to
abandon his conveyance and continue his journey afoot.

“But where did you pass the night?” inquired his wife, after he had
briefly related his adventure.

“With old Deluse at the ‘Isle of Pines,’” {372} was the laughing reply;
“and a glum enough time I had of it. He made no objection to my
remaining, but not a word could I get out of him.”

Fortunately for the interests of truth there was present at this
conversation Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, a lawyer and _littérateur_ of
Columbus, the same who wrote the delightful “Mellowcraft Papers.”
Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr.
Galbraith’s answer this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the
exclamations that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly inquired:
“How came you to go in there?”

This is Mr. Maren’s version of Mr. Galbraith’s reply:

“I saw a light moving about the house, and being nearly blinded by the
sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put up my horse
in the old rail stable, where it is now. I then rapped at the door, and
getting no invitation went in without one. The room was dark, but having
matches I found a candle and lit it. I tried to enter the adjoining
room, but the door was fast, and although I heard the old man’s heavy
footsteps in there he made no response to my calls. There was no fire on
the hearth, so I made one and laying [_sic_] down before it with my
overcoat under my head, prepared myself for sleep. Pretty soon the door
that I had tried silently opened and the old man came in, carrying a
candle. I spoke to him pleasantly, apologizing for my intrusion, but he
took no notice of me. He seemed to be searching for something, though
his eyes were unmoved in their sockets. I wonder if he ever walks in his
sleep. He took a circuit a part of the way round the room, and went out
the same way he had come in. Twice more before I slept he came back into
the room, acting precisely the same way, and departing as at first. In
the intervals I heard him tramping all over the house, his footsteps
distinctly audible in the pauses of the storm. When I woke in the
morning he had already gone out.”

Mr. Maren attempted some further questioning, but was unable longer to
restrain the family’s tongues; the story of Deluse’s death and burial
came out, greatly to the good minister’s astonishment.

“The explanation of your adventure is very simple,” said Mr. Maren. “I
don’t believe old Deluse walks in his sleep—not in his present one; but
you evidently dream in yours.”

And to this view of the matter Mr. Galbraith was compelled reluctantly to
assent.

Nevertheless, a late hour of the next night found these two gentlemen,
accompanied by a son of the minister, in the road in front of the old
Deluse house. There was a light inside; it appeared now at one window
and now at another. The three men advanced to the door. Just as they
reached it there came from the interior a confusion of the most appalling
sounds—the clash of weapons, steel against steel, sharp explosions as of
firearms, shrieks of women, groans and the curses of men in combat! The
investigators stood a moment, irresolute, frightened. Then Mr. Galbraith
tried the door. It was fast. But the minister was a man of courage, a
man, moreover, of Herculean strength. He retired a pace or two and
rushed against the door, striking it with his right shoulder and bursting
it from the frame with a loud crash. In a moment the three were inside.
Darkness and silence! The only sound was the beating of their hearts.

Mr. Maren had provided himself with matches and a candle. With some
difficulty, begotten of his excitement, he made a light, and they
proceeded to explore the place, passing from room to room. Everything
was in orderly arrangement, as it had been left by the sheriff; nothing
had been disturbed. A light coating of dust was everywhere. A back door
was partly open, as if by neglect, and their first thought was that the
authors of the awful revelry might have escaped. The door was opened,
and the light of the candle shone through upon the ground. The expiring
effort of the previous night’s storm had been a light fall of snow; there
were no footprints; the white surface was unbroken. They closed the door
and entered the last room of the four that the house contained—that
farthest from the road, in an angle of the building. Here the candle in
Mr. Maren’s hand was suddenly extinguished as by a draught of air.
Almost immediately followed the sound of a heavy fall. When the candle
had been hastily relighted young Mr. Galbraith was seen prostrate on the
floor at a little distance from the others. He was dead. In one hand
the body grasped a heavy sack of coins, which later examination showed to
be all of old Spanish mintage. Directly over the body as it lay, a board
had been torn from its fastenings in the wall, and from the cavity so
disclosed it was evident that the bag had been taken.

Another inquest was held: another _post-mortem_ examination failed to
reveal a probable cause of death. Another verdict of “the visitation of
God” left all at liberty to form their own conclusions. Mr. Maren
contended that the young man died of excitement.

A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT

HENRY SAYLOR, who was killed in Covington, in a quarrel with Antonio
Finch, was a reporter on the Cincinnati _Commercial_. In the year 1859 a
vacant dwelling in Vine street, in Cincinnati, became the center of a
local excitement because of the strange sights and sounds said to be
observed in it nightly. According to the testimony of many reputable
residents of the vicinity these were inconsistent with any other
hypothesis than that the house was haunted. Figures with something
singularly unfamiliar about them were seen by crowds on the sidewalk to
pass in and out. No one could say just where they appeared upon the open
lawn on their way to the front door by which they entered, nor at exactly
what point they vanished as they came out; or, rather, while each
spectator was positive enough about these matters, no two agreed. They
were all similarly at variance in their descriptions of the figures
themselves. Some of the bolder of the curious throng ventured on several
evenings to stand upon the doorsteps to intercept them, or failing in
this, get a nearer look at them. These courageous men, it was said, were
unable to force the door by their united strength, and always were hurled
from the steps by some invisible agency and severely injured; the door
immediately afterward opening, apparently of its own volition, to admit
or free some ghostly guest. The dwelling was known as the Roscoe house,
a family of that name having lived there for some years, and then, one by
one, disappeared, the last to leave being an old woman. Stories of foul
play and successive murders had always been rife, but never were
authenticated.

One day during the prevalence of the excitement Saylor presented himself
at the office of the _Commercial_ for orders. He received a note from
the city editor which read as follows: “Go and pass the night alone in
the haunted house in Vine street and if anything occurs worth while make
two columns.” Saylor obeyed his superior; he could not afford to lose
his position on the paper.

Apprising the police of his intention, he effected an entrance through a
rear window before dark, walked through the deserted rooms, bare of
furniture, dusty and desolate, and seating himself at last in the parlor
on an old sofa which he had dragged in from another room watched the
deepening of the gloom as night came on. Before it was altogether dark
the curious crowd had collected in the street, silent, as a rule, and
expectant, with here and there a scoffer uttering his incredulity and
courage with scornful remarks or ribald cries. None knew of the anxious
watcher inside. He feared to make a light; the uncurtained windows would
have betrayed his presence, subjecting him to insult, possibly to injury.
Moreover, he was too conscientious to do anything to enfeeble his
impressions and unwilling to alter any of the customary conditions under
which the manifestations were said to occur.

It was now dark outside, but light from the street faintly illuminated
the part of the room that he was in. He had set open every door in the
whole interior, above and below, but all the outer ones were locked and
bolted. Sudden exclamations from the crowd caused him to spring to the
window and look out. He saw the figure of a man moving rapidly across
the lawn toward the building—saw it ascend the steps; then a projection
of the wall concealed it. There was a noise as of the opening and
closing of the hall door; he heard quick, heavy footsteps along the
passage—heard them ascend the stairs—heard them on the uncarpeted floor
of the chamber immediately overhead.

Saylor promptly drew his pistol, and groping his way up the stairs
entered the chamber, dimly lighted from the street. No one was there.
He heard footsteps in an adjoining room and entered that. It was dark
and silent. He struck his foot against some object on the floor, knelt
by it, passed his hand over it. It was a human head—that of a woman.
Lifting it by the hair this iron-nerved man returned to the half-lighted
room below, carried it near the window and attentively examined it.
While so engaged he was half conscious of the rapid opening and closing
of the outer door, of footfalls sounding all about him. He raised his
eyes from the ghastly object of his attention and saw himself the center
of a crowd of men and women dimly seen; the room was thronged with them.
He thought the people had broken in.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, coolly, “you see me under suspicious
circumstances, but”—his voice was drowned in peals of laughter—such
laughter as is heard in asylums for the insane. The persons about him
pointed at the object in his hand and their merriment increased as he
dropped it and it went rolling among their feet. They danced about it
with gestures grotesque and attitudes obscene and indescribable. They
struck it with their feet, urging it about the room from wall to wall;
pushed and overthrew one another in their struggles to kick it; cursed
and screamed and sang snatches of ribald songs as the battered head
bounded about the room as if in terror and trying to escape. At last it
shot out of the door into the hall, followed by all, with tumultuous
haste. That moment the door closed with a sharp concussion. Saylor was
alone, in dead silence.

Carefully putting away his pistol, which all the time he had held in his
hand, he went to a window and looked out. The street was deserted and
silent; the lamps were extinguished; the roofs and chimneys of the houses
were sharply outlined against the dawn-light in the east. He left the
house, the door yielding easily to his hand, and walked to the
_Commercial_ office. The city editor was still in his office—asleep.
Saylor waked him and said: “I have been at the haunted house.”

The editor stared blankly as if not wholly awake. “Good God!” he cried,
“are you Saylor?”

“Yes—why not?” The editor made no answer, but continued staring.

“I passed the night there—it seems,” said Saylor.

“They say that things were uncommonly quiet out there,” the editor said,
trifling with a paper-weight upon which he had dropped his eyes, “did
anything occur?”

“Nothing whatever.”

A VINE ON A HOUSE

ABOUT three miles from the little town of Norton, in Missouri, on the
road leading to Maysville, stands an old house that was last occupied by
a family named Harding. Since 1886 no one has lived in it, nor is anyone
likely to live in it again. Time and the disfavor of persons dwelling
thereabout are converting it into a rather picturesque ruin. An observer
unacquainted with its history would hardly put it into the category of
“haunted houses,” yet in all the region round such is its evil
reputation. Its windows are without glass, its doorways without doors;
there are wide breaches in the shingle roof, and for lack of paint the
weatherboarding is a dun gray. But these unfailing signs of the
supernatural are partly concealed and greatly softened by the abundant
foliage of a large vine overrunning the entire structure. This vine—of a
species which no botanist has ever been able to name—has an important
part in the story of the house.

The Harding family consisted of Robert Harding, his wife Matilda, Miss
Julia Went, who was her sister, and two young children. Robert Harding
was a silent, cold-mannered man who made no friends in the neighborhood
and apparently cared to make none. He was about forty years old, frugal
and industrious, and made a living from the little farm which is now
overgrown with brush and brambles. He and his sister-in-law were rather
tabooed by their neighbors, who seemed to think that they were seen too
frequently together—not entirely their fault, for at these times they
evidently did not challenge observation. The moral code of rural
Missouri is stern and exacting.

Mrs. Harding was a gentle, sad-eyed woman, lacking a left foot.

At some time in 1884 it became known that she had gone to visit her
mother in Iowa. That was what her husband said in reply to inquiries,
and his manner of saying it did not encourage further questioning. She
never came back, and two years later, without selling his farm or
anything that was his, or appointing an agent to look after his
interests, or removing his household goods, Harding, with the rest of the
family, left the country. Nobody knew whither he went; nobody at that
time cared. Naturally, whatever was movable about the place soon
disappeared and the deserted house became “haunted” in the manner of its
kind.

One summer evening, four or five years later, the Rev. J. Gruber, of
Norton, and a Maysville attorney named Hyatt met on horseback in front of
the Harding place. Having business matters to discuss, they hitched
their animals and going to the house sat on the porch to talk. Some
humorous reference to the somber reputation of the place was made and
forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of their business affairs
until it grew almost dark. The evening was oppressively warm, the air
stagnant.

Presently both men started from their seats in surprise: a long vine that
covered half the front of the house and dangled its branches from the
edge of the porch above them was visibly and audibly agitated, shaking
violently in every stem and leaf.

“We shall have a storm,” Hyatt exclaimed.

Gruber said nothing, but silently directed the other’s attention to the
foliage of adjacent trees, which showed no movement; even the delicate
tips of the boughs silhouetted against the clear sky were motionless.
They hastily passed down the steps to what had been a lawn and looked
upward at the vine, whose entire length was now visible. It continued in
violent agitation, yet they could discern no disturbing cause.

“Let us leave,” said the minister.

And leave they did. Forgetting that they had been traveling in opposite
directions, they rode away together. They went to Norton, where they
related their strange experience to several discreet friends.