Paul Prescott's Charge

Ben waited till Mr. Mudge was close at hand, when all at once he started from his place of concealment completely enveloped in the sheet with which he was provided. He stood motionless before the astounded Mudge.

“Who are you?” exclaimed Mudge, his knees knocking together in terror, clinging to an overhanging branch for support.

There was no answer.

“Who are you?” he again asked in affright.

“Sally Baker,” returned Ben, in as sepulchral a voice as he could command.

Sally Baker was an old pauper, who had recently died. The name occurred to Ben on the spur of the moment. It was with some difficulty that he succeeded in getting out the name, such was his amusement at Mr. Mudge’s evident terror.

“What do you want of me?” inquired Mudge, nervously.

“You half starved me when I was alive,” returned Ben, in a hollow voice, “I must be revenged.”

So saying he took one step forward, spreading out his arms. This was too much for Mr. Mudge. With a cry he started and ran towards home at the top of his speed, with Ben in pursuit.

“I believe I shall die of laughing,” exclaimed Ben, pausing out of breath, and sitting down on a stone, “what a donkey he is, to be sure, to think there are such things as ghosts. I’d like to be by when he tells Mrs. Mudge.”

After a moment’s thought, Ben wrapped up the sheet, took it under his arm, and once more ran in pursuit of Mr. Mudge.

Meanwhile Mrs. Mudge was sitting in the kitchen of the Poorhouse, mending stockings. She was not in the pleasantest humor, for one of the paupers had managed to break a plate at tea-table (if that can be called tea where no tea is provided), and trifles were sufficient to ruffle Mrs. Mudge’s temper.

“Where’s Mudge, I wonder?” she said, sharply; “over to the tavern, I s’pose, as usual. There never was such a shiftless, good-for-nothing man. I’d better have stayed unmarried all the days of my life than have married him. If he don’t get in by ten, I’ll lock the door, and it shall stay locked. ‘Twill serve him right to stay out doors all night.”

Minutes slipped away, and the decisive hour approached.

“I’ll go to the door and look out,” thought Mrs. Mudge, “if he ain’t anywhere in sight I’ll fasten the door.”

She laid down her work and went to the door.

She had not quite reached it when it was flung open violently, and Mr. Mudge, with a wild, disordered look, rushed in, nearly overturning his wife, who gazed at him with mingled anger and astonishment.

“What do you mean by this foolery, Mudge?” she demanded, sternly.

“What do I mean?” repeated her husband, vaguely.

“I needn’t ask you,” said his wife, contemptuously. “I see how it is, well enough. You’re drunk!”

“Drunk!”

“Yes, drunk; as drunk as a beast.”

“Well, Mrs. Mudge,” hiccoughed her husband, in what he endeavored to make a dignified tone, “you’d be drunk too if you’d seen what I’ve seen.”

“And what have you seen, I should like to know?” said Mrs. Mudge.

Mudge rose with some difficulty, steadied himself on his feet, and approaching his wife, whispered in a tragic tone, “Mrs. Mudge, I’ve seen a sperrit.”

“It’s plain enough that you’ve seen spirit,” retorted his wife. “‘Tisn’t many nights that you don’t, for that matter. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mudge.”

“It isn’t that,” said her husband, shaking his hand, “it’s a sperrit,—a ghost, that I’ve seen.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs. Mudge, sarcastically, “perhaps you can tell whose it is.”

“It was the sperrit of Sally Baker,” said Mudge, solemnly.

“What did she say?” demanded Mrs. Mudge, a little curiously.

“She said that I—that we, half starved her, and then she started to run after me—and—oh, Lordy, there she is now!”

Mudge jumped trembling to his feet. Following the direction of his outstretched finger, Mrs. Mudge caught a glimpse of a white figure just before the window. I need hardly say that it was Ben, who had just arrived upon the scene.

Mrs. Mudge was at first stupefied by what she saw, but being a woman of courage she speedily recovered herself, and seizing the broom from behind the door, darted out in search of the “spirit.” But Ben, perceiving that he was discovered, had disappeared, and there was nothing to be seen.

“Didn’t I tell you so?” muttered Mudge, as his wife re-entered, baffled in her attempt, “you’ll believe it’s a sperrit, now.”

“Go to bed, you fool!” retorted his wife.

This was all that passed between Mr. and Mrs. Mudge on the subject. Mr. Mudge firmly believes, to this day, that the figure which appeared to him was the spirit of Sally Baker.

XXVIII

HOW BEN GOT HOME

Delighted with the complete success of his practical joke, Ben took his way homeward with the sheet under his arm. By the time he reached his father’s house it was ten o’clock. The question for Ben to consider now was, how to get in. If his father had not fastened the front door he might steal in, and slip up stairs on tiptoe without being heard. This would be the easiest way of overcoming the difficulty, and Ben, perceiving that the light was still burning in the sitting-room, had some hopes that he would be able to adopt it. But while he was only a couple of rods distant he saw the lamp taken up by his father, who appeared to be moving from the room.

“He’s going to lock the front door,” thought Ben, in disappointment; “if I had only got along five minutes sooner.”

From his post outside he heard the key turn in the lock.

The ‘Squire little dreamed that the son whom he imagined fast asleep in his room was just outside the door he was locking.

“I guess I’ll go round to the back part of the house,” thought Ben, “perhaps I can get in the same way I came out.”

Accordingly he went round and managed to clamber upon the roof, which was only four feet from the ground. But a brief trial served to convince our young adventurer that it is a good deal easier sliding down a roof than it is climbing up. The shingles being old were slippery, and though the ascent was not steep, Ben found the progress he made was very much like that of a man at the bottom of a well, who is reported as falling back two feet for every three that he ascended. What increased the difficulty of his attempt was that the soles of his shoes were well worn, and slippery as well as the shingles.

“I never can get up this way,” Ben concluded, after several fruitless attempts; “I know what I’ll do,” he decided, after a moment’s perplexity; “I’ll pull off my shoes and stockings, and then I guess I can get along better.”

Ben accordingly got down from the roof, and pulled off his shoes and stockings. As he wanted to carry these with him, he was at first a little puzzled by this new difficulty. He finally tied the shoes together by the strings and hung them round his neck. He disposed of the stockings by stuffing one in each pocket.

“Now,” thought Ben, “I guess I can get along better. I don’t know what to do with the plaguy sheet, though.”

But necessity is the mother of invention, and Ben found that he could throw the sheet over his shoulders, as a lady does with her shawl. Thus accoutered he recommenced the ascent with considerable confidence.

He found that his bare feet clung to the roof more tenaciously than the shoes had done, and success was already within his grasp, when an unforeseen mishap frustrated his plans. He had accomplished about three quarters of the ascent when all at once the string which united the shoes which he had hung round his neck gave way, and both fell with a great thump on the roof. Ben made a clutch for them in which he lost his own hold, and made a hurried descent in their company, alighting with his bare feet on some flinty gravel stones, which he found by no means agreeable.

“Ow!” ejaculated Ben, limping painfully, “them plaguy gravel stones hurt like thunder. I’ll move ‘em away the first thing to-morrow. If that confounded shoe-string hadn’t broken I’d have been in bed by this time.”