The Fourth Ghost Story MEGAPACK ®. Sarah Orne Jewett
front by steep, unscalable walls of rocks.
I walked to the edge and peered over—and drew back hastily. There was a sheer drop of about five hundred feet, with ugly looking rocks at the bottom. The only means of access was the narrow defile through which I had entered. I could go no farther.
“Well, here I am!” I said aloud, perfectly unconsciously.
“It’s about time,” answered a gruff voice above me.
I sat down and mopped my brow. To be expected at this place and at this time was a good deal of a shock, even to such a believer in fate as myself.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the voice, less gruff this time and with a tone of amusement in it. “It’s a little uncanny at first, but you will get used to it. I did.”
This gave me courage to look up in the direction from which the voice came. There, some fifty feet directly over my head, sitting calmly on the only projecting piece of rock on that whole smooth surface, his legs swinging idly over the edge, was a man!
For a few minutes we looked at each other in silence. He was about my size, dressed in a prospector’s outfit similar to my own, and as new. His face was kindly, showing nothing but amused curiosity, and I began to feel more at ease. There was something even familiar about him, and I wondered where I had seen him before.
“How did you get up there?” I asked, my wonder prompting the question.
“It’s easy when you are in my condition,” he replied casually. “Are you Mr. Bent?”
“Benjamin Bent is my name,” I answered “Who are you?”
“My name is Adams—Jonathan Adams. You have probably heard a great deal about me.”
I gasped. Jonathan Adams was the name of my wife’s second husband, the one before she married me.
“Not the Jonathan Adams who married Mrs. Hayes?” I stammered.
“The same,” he answered. “You, I believe, had the pleasure of marrying her next.”
“But,” I remonstrated, beginning to feel dizzy, “you were supposed to have died five years ago!”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Adams. “I did die. I committed suicide by jumping off this very cliff, as Mr. Hayes did before me.”
“See here,” I said, trying to appear calm. “This is no time to joke. You don’t expect me to believe that you are my wife’s second husband’s ghost!”
“That’s just what I am,” he answered with a grin. “Aren’t you beginning to see through me.”
I looked at him closely. To my astonishment, I could follow a crack in the rock behind him through his shoulders. I sat down and pressed my head between my hands, trying to think.
“There, there!” said the ghost. “Don’t take it so hard. I know just how you feel. I felt the same way when I first saw Mr. Hayes. But, good Heavens, there is nothing to be afraid of. I wouldn’t hurt you if I could. I know what you have been through already. I came down here to help you, the same as Mr. Hayes did for me.”
He was so reassuring and polite and apologetic that most of my fear left me, and my curiosity got the better of what remained. I looked up again with interest.
“I never saw a ghost before,” I said, trying to explain my fright. “I suppose you just floated up to that rock?”
“Sure,” answered Mr. Adams. “I’ll come down to show you.”
With that he slipped off the ledge and slowly floated to my side. He put out his hand, but drew it away hastily when I reached out to shake it. I recognized him now from his likeness to the big picture in the gilt frame which my wife kept hung in the sitting-room beside the one of Mr. Hayes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, referring with evident confusion to his action in withdrawing his hand. “but I can’t get over some of those habits. Of course, you couldn’t shake hands with me, for there is nothing there to shake.”
I saw he was sensitive about it, so I merely laughed, though I was curious to try the effect.
“It’s mighty good of you to take it so well,” he continued. “I was in a blue funk for quite a time before Mr. Hayes could comfort me. A very nice man, that Mr. Hayes. Have you ever met him?”
I shook my head.
“Well, never mind; you will. He didn’t come now because he thought two of us might be too much for you. But we are always together, and I am sure we three will be great friends. Bond of sympathy, you know.”
He sat down beside me and asked me to fill my pipe. It all seemed so natural that I did this with as much unconcern as if he had been Jonathan Adams in the flesh. He apologized for not joining me in my smoke, saying that he had lost his taste for it.
“It’s not a very long story,” he began, after I was nicely puffing, “and my being here is all through Mr. Hayes. He was Amelia’s first husband, you know. He stood it as long as he could, which was just five years. Then he came out here, discovered this place where we are now, and jumped over. It was taking awful chances, when you think that he didn’t know anything of what was coming after. But he was a nervous, high-strung man, and had reached the point where he was willing to take chances. He says now that he would have done it two or three years earlier if he had known the relief and rest he was going to get. It was perfect bliss, all right, after his five years of married life. For a number of years he just sat back and enjoyed it.
“Then he got to thinking, in his generous way, that perhaps some poor fellow was suffering just as he had suffered. This thought kept bothering him so much, being of a tender nature, that he made inquiries and found out about me. After that, the knowledge of my troubles bothered him still more, till at last he couldn’t stand it any longer and began to plan how he could help me out.
“Now, there is a rule where we are that every five years we can come back to Earth on the same day that we snuffed out. There aren’t many of us that do it, because we are satisfied where we are and are content to let the worth go its way undisturbed. But Mr. Hayes was so worried over my troubles that five years ago this very day, which was his ‘day back,’ as we call it, he made arrangements to meet me here.
“We met. It was a meeting that I will never forget, and it took me a long time to get over it. But finally I became accustomed to him, and in an hour he had convinced me, and I jumped off. And I may say that I have never regretted it since.
“Then through some mutual friend we found out about you, and we agreed that it was only fair that you should have the benefit of our experiences. So I have come back to clear up any of the points you may be in doubt about.
“Of course, there are some drawbacks, and we don’t get all the privileges of those who pass out naturally. But it’s so much better than the life you have been leading that there is no comparison.”
Here I stopped him with a gesture of my hand.
“Mr. Adams,” I said brokenly, “I think I understand what you are driving at, and I am very grateful. But did you know that I buried my dear wife last Tuesday?”
“No!” he cried, “You don’t mean to tell me that Amelia is dead?”
For a few moments he remained silent, his head bowed.
“Dear, dear!” he finally said. “I should read the papers more thoroughly. Allow me to condole with you.”
Mechanically he extended his hand. I reached out to grasp it, but my fingers closed on the empty air. He was too much worked up to notice.
“I will take the news back to Mr. Hayes,” he said quietly.
“I am very grateful to you both,” I said after a few moments of respectful silence, “for your kind intentions and your interest in me. Please express to Mr. Hayes my deepest gratitude.”
“Yes,