town-boys set on me at their worst. At length I gave ’em the slip, and turned in here. And here I fell asleep. And what woke me? The ghost of a cry. The ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog: a long, dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person’s dead. That was my last Christmas Eve.”
“What do you mean?” is the very abrupt, and, one might say, fierce retort.
“I mean that I made inquiries everywhere about, and, that no living ears but mine heard either that cry or that howl. So I say they was both ghosts; though why they came to me, I’ve never made out.”
“I thought you were another kind of man,” says Jasper, scornfully.
“So I thought myself,” answers Durdles with his usual composure; “and yet I was picked out for it.”
Jasper had risen suddenly, when he asked him what he meant, and he now says, “Come; we shall freeze here; lead the way.”
Durdles complies, not over-steadily; opens the door at the top of the steps