Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/283

 So Arthur stole two horses out of the pasture, mounted one, and took Mary Jane up behind him, while fat old Aunt Melissa followed along on the other. His errand was to dispose of a bag of produce he had "lifted" from the field. Mary Jane and Aunt Melissa meant to do a little pilfering from the storekeeper while Arther was bargaining. The night was cloudy, and there was very little light, but they went along very pleasantly until they came in sight of the store. They rode around to the side of it, intending to hitch the horses to a fence that enclosed the old man's garden. All of a sudden the clouds swept from the face of the moon, road and garden were flooded with light, and they saw before them, with its fore-feet on the fence, a creature they at first mistook for a dog, but another instant revealed that it was a great hornless goat. That moment it gave an awful cry, unlike any other sound ever heard, and vanished. The horses reared, snorted, trembled, then bounded off towards home, and did not slacken pace until they reached their own bars. Arthur said the only reason he hadn't fallen off was because he was too stiffly fixed in his place; his legs were cramped against the horse's side. As for Mary Jane, her arms were about him, her fingers locked in front of him, and she was squeezing the life out of him. "Let go, Mary Jane," he managed to gasp, at the same time putting a hand on hers. As soon as he felt her hands he groaned out to Aunt Melissa, "Mary Jane is dead!" Aunt Melissa felt her. "She is dead," she said. "Then", said Arthur, "don't turn your horse loose, for it will whinny for mine and wake the white folks. Ride to a cabin door and get help." Soon they had half-a-dozen stalwart men helping them. Finally they managed to get that awful death-grip unlocked. Then they slipped her into the house, carried her upstairs, and laid her in the bed she shared with her mother.

By that time it was almost daylight, and Arthur and his helpers stole away, leaving Aunt Melissa alone with her dead. Immediately she shrieked and alarmed the white people, whom she told, when they came to her, that she had just waked and found her daughter cold by her side.

When some one went to the store to leave orders for nails for Mary Jane's coffin the old man was found dead on the floor. "So 'twas him the goat went for," concluded Arthur