Then I took to prayin' to the best woman
I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but she looked after me--my sister,
Sara, it was. She brought me up, and then died and left me without
anything to hang on to. I didn't know all I'd lost till she was gone. But
I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back--after I'd
prayed till I couldn't see. She come back into my room one night when the
cursed 'haunt' was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, I saw
her. 'Be at peace,' she said, and I spoke to her, and said, 'Sara-why,
Sara' and she smiled, and went away into nothing--like a bit o' cloud in
the sun."
He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a
vision.
"It went?" she asked breathlessly.
"It went like that--" He made a swift, outward gesture. "It went and it
never came back; and she didn't either--not ever. My idee is," he added,
"that there's evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living men
that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they're the ghost-shapes of
men that's dead, but that can't get on Over There. So they try to get
back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they're stalking us."
"I am sure you are right," she said.
She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last
night.
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