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 each other, while the woman whispered, with pale lips:

"It is a ghost,—the poor, old, lame Indian stalking around his own funeral-pile."

This was said in imperfect English, and the man answered in the same tongue:

"It is a fool, you are, Mother Minotte, to call yonder tall, straight figure the ghost of the doubled-down, old creature that once crouched in that cabin."

"Still, I am sure that it is he," was the response; "for though his old body was bent, why could not his ghost be tall and straight, fleet and vigorous, as in his youth? for thus, we hear, spirits are when they have left this earth for upper spheres."

"Much we hear, Mother Minotte, little we know of what is beyond us," returned the man.

"But I wish that I could believe that yonder striding figure is nothing worse, or more powerful, than the ghost of the old red-skin that died here."