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Hot-Foot Hannibal  203

head, "I doan see'er, but de mare sees 'er."
  "How do you know" I inquired.
  "Well, suh, dis yer is a gray hoss, en dis yer is a Friday; en a gray hoss kin alluz see a ha'nt w'at walks on Friday."
  "Who was Chloe?" said Mabel.
  "And why does Chloe's haunt walk?" asked my wife.
  "It's all in de tale, ma'm," Julius replied with a deep sigh. "It's all in de tale."
  "Tell us the tale," I said. "Perhaps, by the time you get through, the haunt will go away and the mare will cross."
  I was willing to humor the old man's fancy. He had not told us a story for some time; and the dark and solemn swamp around us; the amber-colored stream flowing silently and sluggishly at our feet, like the waters of Lethe; the heavy, aromatic scent of the bays, faintly suggestive of funeral wreaths,-