"I--I--I don't know," says Philo, and he didn't.
The ghost rises, steps down from the gig, and extends his hand. It is very cold and clammy, but still a sound, fleshly hand, though quite hard and shrunken from its early proportions.
"_Thank God!_" responds John Avery, fervently.
"How came you here?" asks Philo, still a little incredulous as to the real mortality of his companion.
"On my way to attend your funeral," says John.
"Why, no,--that can't be,--I'm going to yours."
John takes out a letter and reads aloud: "_Philo Avery died last night. Funeral at ten o'clock to-morrow morning._"
"Just like mine, except the name," says Philo. "So you thought I was a ghost."
"Didn't know what else you could be. You looked queer enough for one," replied John.
"Well, I've lived long enough to see ghosts, but this is the first of that kind of gentry that ever showed themselves to me," cried Philo, in his high, cracked voice, and actually convulsed with laughter. John joined in, and the two ghosts made the whole region alive.
"It must have been somebody that knew about the wills," said John, when they had grown calm.
"Yes," replied Philo; "and what cursed things they have been?"
"Yes, of course,--have you?" answered John, reddening faintly.
"Why, yes,--and here it goes," cried Philo, with sudden energy, pulling it out, and shredding it in strips. John was not to be outdone. With equal eagerness he pulled his out, and, in a few seconds, both the wills were fluttering in fragments among the elderberry bushes by the road-side.
"What a contemptible old screw I've been!" exclaimed John, penitentially, as the insurance table came into his mind.
"No worse than I," said Philo, thinking of all his drudging, grovelling years.
"Why, do you know I've wished you dead," burst out John.
"Well, suppose you have,--I've done the same by you," answered Philo.
"And help us in the future," continued John.
The muffled clatter of a horse's hoofs sounded through the fog, and presently the twinkling face of Jack Niles beamed upon the ghostly couple. Looking with well simulated astonishment on the group, the empty gig, and his venerable namesake standing in the middle of the road, Jack paused and begged to know what was the trouble, and whether he could be of service.