WILD HUNTING COMPANIONS 185 



and sat down on the log too. It was a white 

 man, and he carried his head in his hand. The 

 head spoke: 'Well, nigger, you surely can run!' 

 and Jake he answered: 'Mr. WTiite Man, you 

 ain't never seen me run,' and then he did run. 

 And he came to the judge's and he beat on the 

 door and called out: 'Judge, I'se come back; 

 and. Judge, I don't want that five dollars!' " 



The planter in connection with whose hounds 

 the negro worked told me that this was a ghost- 

 story that for a year had been told everywhere 

 among the colored folk, but about all kinds of 

 houses and people, and that the narrator didn't 

 really believe it; but that, nevertheless, he be- 

 lieved enough of it to be afraid of empty houses 

 after dark, and moreover that he had been fright- 

 ened into leaving a swamp planter's pigs en- 

 tirely alone by the planter's playing ghost and 

 calling out to him at nightfall as he, the negro, 

 was travelling a lonely road with possible in- 

 nocence of motive. 



Strongly contrasted with such more than half 

 comic or grotesque ghost-stories was one told 

 me once, not by a hunting companion but by a 

 polished and cultivated Tahitian gentleman, a 

 guest of Henry Adams in Washington. His 

 creed was the creed of his present surroundings ; 

 but back of the beyond in his mind lurked old 



