280 THE LAST DAY AT CIIEE-HA. 



discover the place of his burial!' "Whether he did 

 this, to mark his scorn of consecrated ground, and 

 of religious services over the departed ; or whether 

 he feared that the slaves whom he had maltreated, 

 would offer indignities to his remains ; it is useless 

 to inquire. All that we know is that he died, and 

 was buried as he had desired. No headstone mark- 

 ed the spot of his grave ; no prayer was breathed 

 above it no requiem sung. At midnight 

 stealthily, and by the glimmer of a torch was he 

 returned to earth ; and all was silent, but the sigh- 

 ing of the night-wind among the towering pines 

 .as if Nature moaned over the desolation of her per- 

 verse and misguided child ! 



" The negro looks on this as haunted ground ; and 

 hurries over it, after nightfall, with quickened step 

 and palpitating heart ! Sometimes a gush of air, 

 warm as from a furnace, passes fitfully across his 

 face while a cold shivering seizes on his frame ! 

 "What surer token than this, that a Spirit is passing 

 near! Sometimes a milk-white buck is seen, by 

 glimpses of the moon, taking gigantic leaps then 

 shrouded in a mist wreath, and changed, in a twink- 

 ling, into the likeness of a pale old man, swathed in 

 his grave clothes then melting away slowly into 

 air ! At other times, the Spectre Buck ' starts up 

 before his eyes, pursued by phantom hounds, which 



