Our conversation was short, but long
enough to convince me that the Little Gentleman did not want my company
in his chamber, and did not mean to have it.
I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,--a
schoolgirl's secrets and a whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up
such nonsense and mind my own business.--Hark! What the deuse is that
odd noise in his chamber?
--I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I was
a boy, that diabolized my imagination,--I mean, that gave me a distinct
apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the
neighborhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of marks
called the "Devil's footsteps." These were patches of sand in the
pastures, where no grass grew, where the low-bush blackberry, the
"dewberry," as our Southern neighbors call it, in prettier and more
Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers,--where even
the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was bare
and blasted.
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