Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. (IA mobot31753002412044).pdf/347

 A few more minutes and Jenal was dead; and when his wife saw that his spirit had passed, she wailed and mourned him. Then she fetched a white cloth and covered the corpse with it, composing his limbs and placing a censer at his feet. Then she went down from the house to fetch sireh leaves, hoping all the while that her mother would soon come.

There she was left alone, husking betel nuts with the betel scissors and ever she kept peering into the darkness for her mother's coming. Now all at once she heard the sound of feet climbing the house ladder and she called out, "Who is there? Come in," "It is I" came the answer and there entered an ancient crone, hump backed and gap toothed with long skinny fingers and nails like talons.

When did your man die?" asked she; and the widow an- swered. About dusk this evening; and glad I am that you have come, left alone as I am in the middle of the jungle."

Then the old hag went up to the body and lifted the cloth that covered it; she sniffed at the body and licked it, with furtive glances around her. And when Debus saw her acting thus she was sore afraid for she knew that the old hag was an evil spirit. She took the scissors and pretended to be husking nuts; but while she did so, she glanced above and there all along the beams and joists she saw a row of ghosts, dangling their feet, dressed like Hajis with long tasselled turbans; and when she saw them she shivered and her knees shook with the fear of them.

Seeking for a way to escape, she dropped her scissors to the ground through the floor and cried "Old dame, I have dropped my scissors. I must go out and get them back." "Don't bother! it is dark outside and you have nuts ready husked." "Not enough yet, mother; I'll go and get the scissors."

So she went out and when she reached the ground, she ran away at once; and when she had run perhaps twenty yards, she heard the thud of the ghosts' feet, as they leaped down to chase her. Now Debus thought, "If I simply go on running they'll certainly catch me." So she hid behind a great tree trunk, and the swarm of ghosts rushed past, looking straight in front of them and never dreaming that the woman had turned aside to hide. A second later they ran into a wild sow, grunting as she turned in her wallow, and the ghosts thought it was the woman. "Where are you hiding?" they cried, "wherever it be, we shall have your blood to-night." And they fell on the pig and beat it to death forthwith.

While they were engaged in this, Debus stole away and making a wide turn ran and never stopped till she reached her mother's house. There she told them all that had happened and her father said. "Wait till day break and we'll go in a body to the clearing and bury your man."