Drawing
near in a stealthy manner he whispered:
"Yo' bettah not, Miss Jinny!"
"Better not?" I repeated, staring.
He answered with a portentous head-shake.
"Oh, nonsense, Cookie!" I said impatiently, "There's not a thing on
the island but the pigs!"
"Miss Jinny," he solemnly replied, "dey's pigs and pigs."
"Yes, but pigs _is_ pigs, you know," I answered, laughing. I was
about to walk on, but once more Cookie intervened.
"Dey's pigs and pigs, chile--live ones and--dead ones.
"Dead ones? Of course--haven't we been eating them?"
"Yo' won't neveh eat dis yere kind o' dead pig, Miss Jinny.
It's--it's a ha'nt!"
The murder was out. Cookie leaned against a cocoa-palm and wiped
his ebon brow.
Persistently questioned, he told at last how, today and yesterday,
arising in the dim dawn to build his fire before the camp was
stirring, he had seen lurking at the edge of the clearing a white
four-footed shape. It was a pig, yet not a pig; its ghostly hue,
its noiseless movements, divided it from all proper mundane porkers
by the dreadful gulf which divides the living from the dead. The
first morning Cookie, doubtful of his senses, had flung a stone and
the spectral Thing had vanished like a shadow. On its second
appearance, having had a day and a night for meditation, he had
known better than to commit such an outrage upon the possessor of
ghostly powers, and had resorted to prayer instead.
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