Then came the remembrance
of an afternoon meeting between the two in the woods of the Kelsey
estate--how, just as they were parting, Walter had heard footsteps near
them, and, glancing sharply around, saw an evil, scowling, murderous
face peering through the brush. He had started toward it, but the owner
of the countenance had taken himself hurriedly off. The gossiping townspeople had misconstrued this romance, and when Albert
Kelsey had heard of this clandestine meeting from the man who was later
on to appear as a leader of the mob, and that he had discharged Stedman,
they had believed that the young man had formally proposed and had been
rejected. But justice had gone wrong, as it had done innumerable times
before, and will again. An innocent man was to be hanged, even without
the comfort of a trial, while the man who was guilty was free to wander
where he would. That autumn night the darkness came quickly, and only the stars did
their best to light the scene. A body of men, all masked, and having as
a leader one who had ever since Stedman’s arrival in town, cherished a
secret hatred of the young man, dragged Stedman from the calaboose and
tramped through the town, defying all, defying even God himself. Along
the highway, and into Farmer Brown’s “cross cut,” they went, vigilantly
guarding their prisoner, who, with the lanterns lighting up his haggard
face, walked among them with the lagging step of utter hopelessness. “That’s a good tree,” their leader said, presently, stopping and
pointing out a spreading oak; when the slipknot was adjusted and Stedman
had stepped on the box, he added: “If you’ve got anything to say, you’d
better say it now.”

“I am innocent, I swear before God,” the doomed man answered; “I never
took the life of Margaret Kelsey.”

“Give us your proof,” jeered the leader, and when Stedman kept a
despairing silence, he laughed shortly. “Ready, men!” he gave the order. The box was kicked aside, and
then--only a writhing body swung to and fro in the gloom. In front of the men stood their leader, watching the contortions of the
body with silent glee. “I’ll tell you a secret, boys,” he said suddenly. “I was after that poor murdered girl myself. A d---- little chance I
had; but, by ----, he had just as little!”

A pause--then: “He’s shunted this earth. Cut him down, you fellows!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“It’s no use, son. I’ll give up the blasted thing as a bad job. There’s
something queer about that there tree. Do you see how its branches
balance it? We have cut the trunk nearly in two, but it won’t come down. There’s plenty of others around; we’ll take one of them. If I’d a long
rope with me I’d get that tree down, and yet the way the thing stands it
would be risking a fellow’s life to climb it. It’s got the devil in it,
sure.”

So old Farmer Brown shouldered his axe and made for another tree, his
son following. They had sawed and chopped and chopped and sawed, and yet
the tall white oak, with its branches jutting out almost as regularly as
if done by the work of a machine, stood straight and firm. Farmer Brown, well known for his weak, cowardly spirit, who in beholding
the murder of Albert Kelsey’s daughter, had in his fright mistaken the
criminal, now in his superstition let the oak stand, because its
well-balanced position saved it from falling, when other trees would
have been down. And so this tree, the same one to which an innocent man
had been hanged, was left--for other work. It was a bleak, rainy night--such a night as can be found only in
central California. The wind howled like a thousand demons, and lashed
the trees together in wild embraces. Now and then the weird “hoot,
hoot!” of an owl came softly from the distance in the lulls of the
storm, while the barking of coyotes woke the echoes of the hills into
sounds like fiendish laughter. In the wind and rain a man fought his path through the bush and into
Farmer Brown’s “cross cut,” as the shortest way home. Suddenly he
stopped, trembling, as if held by some unseen impulse. Before him rose
the white oak, wavering and swaying in the storm. “Good God! it’s the tree I swung Stedman from!” he cried, and a strange
fear thrilled him. His eyes were fixed on it, held by some undefinable fascination. Yes,
there on one of the longest branches a small piece of rope still
dangled. And then, to the murderer’s excited vision, this rope seemed to
lengthen, to form at the end into a slipknot, a knot that encircled a
purple neck, while below it writhed and swayed the body of a man! “Damn him!” he muttered, starting toward the hanging form, as if about
to help the rope in its work of strangulation; “will he forever follow
me? And yet he deserved it, the black-hearted villain! He took her
life----”

He never finished the sentence. The white oak, towering above him in its
strength, seemed to grow like a frenzied, living creature. There was a
sudden splitting sound, then came a crash, and under the fallen tree lay
Stedman’s murderer, crushed and mangled. From between the broken trunk and the stump that was left, a gray, dim
shape sprang out, and sped past the man’s still form, away into the wild
blackness of the night. THE PARLOR-CAR GHOST. All draped with blue denim--the seaside cottage of my friend, Sara Pyne. She asked me to go there with her when she opened it to have it set in
order for the summer. She confessed that she felt a trifle nervous at
the idea of entering it alone. And I am always ready for an excursion. So much blue denim rather surprised me, because blue is not
complimentary to Sara’s complexion--she always wears some shade of red,
by preference. She perceived my wonder; she is very near-sighted, and
therefore sees everything by some sort of sixth sense. “You do not like my portieres and curtains and table-covers,” said she. “Neither do I. But I did it to accommodate. And now he rests well in his
grave, I hope.”

“Whose grave, for pity’s sake?”

“Mr. J. Billington Price’s.”

“And who is he? He doesn’t sound interesting.”

“Then I will tell you about him,” said Sara, taking a seat directly in
front of one of those curtains. “Last autumn I was leaving this place
for New York, traveling on the fast express train known as the Flying
Yankee. Of course, I thought of the Flying Dutchman and Wagner’s musical
setting of the uncanny legend, and how different things are in these
days of steam, etc. Then I looked out of the window at the landscape,
the horizon that seemed to wheel in a great curve as the train sped on. Every now and then I had an impression at the ‘tail of the eye’ that a
man was sitting in a chair three or four numbers in front of me on the
opposite side of the car. Each time that I saw this shape I looked at
the chair and ascertained that it was unoccupied. But it was an odd
trick of vision. I raised my lorgnette, and the chair showed emptier
than before. There was nobody in it, certainly. But the more I knew that
it was vacant the more plainly I saw the man.