Page:Rainbow Valley text.djvu/312

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296
RAINBOW VALLEY

Henry didn't die right off, but he begun having fits—epileps, they called 'em—and he grew up kind of simple, till he was about eighteen. His uncle used to thrash him in that garden up there, 'cause it was back of the house where no one could see him. But folks could hear and they say it was awful sometimes hearing poor Henry plead with his uncle not to kill him. But nobody dared interfere 'cause old Tom was such a reprobate he'd have been sure to get square with 'em some way. He burned the barns of a man at Harbour Head who offended him. At last Henry died and his uncle and aunt give out he died in one of his fits and that was all anybody ever knowed, but everybody said Tom had just up and killed him for keeps at last. And it wasn't long till it got round that Henry walked. That old garden was ha'nted. He was heard there at nights, moaning and crying. Old Tom and his wife got out—went out West and never come back. The place got such a bad name nobody'd buy or rent it That's why it's all gone to ruin. That was thirty years ago, but Henry Warren's ghost ha'nts it yet."

"Do you believe that?" asked Nan scornfully. "I don't."

"Well, good people have seen him—and heard him," retorted Mary. "They say he appears and grovels on the ground and holds you by the legs and gibbers and moans like he did when he was alive. I thought of that as soon as I seen that white thing in the bushes and thought if it caught me like that and moaned I'd