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. White 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 



