Other Worlds Read Online Free Page A

to a friend and this young man, Hall by name, suggested that they dig up the graves in order to look for relics.
    Hoping for tomahawks and arrowheads, they were disappointed to find only scattered bones. Idly, young Hall picked up a jawbone and carried it back to the house. No doubt he and Drew handled the fragment unceremoniously, joking and laughing with the frivolity of youth. Hall finally threw it against the wall. One of the teeth was jarred loose and dropped into a crack in the floor. Mr. Bell happened to pass by just then and was annoyed at the boys' irreverence. After scolding them, he ordered one of the slaves to return the jawbone and fill in the grave.
    Undoubtedly the whole family knew about this incident, but they had forgotten it until the Spirit jogged their memories. Mr. Bell thought the matter worth investigating, but though the floor was taken up and the dirt beneath sifted, no tooth was found. After the work was finished, the Spirit laughed. "It was just a joke to fool old Jack Bell," it remarked.
    This performance ought to have made the Bells wary of any similar explanation offered by their uncanny guest, but the Spirit's next invention was accepted even more eagerly, perhaps because it was sweetened with an appeal to greed.
    "I am the spirit of an early immigrant. I brought a large sum of money and buried it for safekeeping until it was needed. In the meantime I died without divulging the secret and I have returned in the spirit for the purpose of making known the hiding place. I want Betsy Bell to have the money."
    Betsy probably felt she deserved it. The Spirit had taken to slapping her as well as pulling her hair.
    After waving this golden bait before the audience, the Spirit played coy. It insisted on a number of arbitrary conditions before it consented to tell where the treasure was buried. Drew Bell and his brother-in-law Bennett Porter must do the actual digging. Mr. Johnson, whom it referred to familiarly as "Old Sugar Mouth," must go with them to make sure the work was properly carried out and to ensure that every penny of the treasure would go to Betsy.
    There was laughter and incredulity at this remarkable offer, but in the end the persons mentioned decided to have a go at it. Don't look superior, gentlemen; wouldn't you have done the same? The Spirit's directions were detailed: the money was buried under a large flat rock on the southwest corner of the farm, near the river. It obviously knew every inch of the property.
    So the party got up at the crack of dawn—obeying another of the Spirit's demands—and set out, shovels and pickaxes in hand. The rock was enormous and so deeply sunk in the earth that it took the sweating boys hours to raise it. There was nothing underneath but dirt.
    After some angry discussion, the party decided not to give up yet. Mr. Johnson had helped with the raising of the stone. Now he sat down to rest and supervise while Drew and Bennett dug. By the time the light began to fail they had excavated a hole six feet square and almost as deep without finding anything.
    Disheveled, dirty and disgusted, the duped party returned to the house. When they were relaxing in the reception room after supper the voice of the Spirit was heard, cackling with laughter over the trick it had played on them.
    "Drew can handle a sight of dirt," it chortled. "His hands were made for that, and are better than a shovel. No gold can slip through his fingers. And Old Sugar Mouth looked on, praying and encouraging the boys. Oh, how it made them sweat!"
    Its mirth was contagious. The whole family—except, perhaps, the exhausted Drew—burst into peals of laughter.
    The visitors continued to ask questions and the Spirit continued to tease them. It informed Calvin Johnson it was the ghost of a child buried in North Carolina; Calvin's brother John was told that it was the witch of his stepmother. Its next invention was not so harmless.
    "I am the witch of old Kate Batts, and I have come to torment