listen to me. There ain't no house there.
Hello! I didn't know you'd go for to drop the
biscuits. Wait, I'll help you pick 'em up.
By cracky, they're hot, ain't they? What you
puttin' a towel over 'em for? Well, you set
down here on my knee, so. Now you look
over at that there house. You see it, don't
yeh? Well, it ain't there! No! I saw it the
first week I was out here. I was jus' half
dyin', thinkin' of you an' wonderin' why you
didn't write. That was the time you was mad
at me. So I rode over there one day -- lookin'
up company, so t' speak -- and there wa'n't no
house there. I spent all one Sunday lookin'
for it. Then I spoke to Jim Geary about it.
He laughed an' got a little white about th'
gills, an' he said he guessed I'd have to look
a good while before I found it. He said that
there shack was an ole joke."

"Why -- what --"

"Well, this here is th' story he tol' me.
He said a man an' his wife come out here t'
live an' put up that there little place. An'
she was young, you know, an' kind o' skeery,
and she got lonesome. It worked on her an'
worked on her, an' one day she up an' killed
the baby an' her husband an' herself. Th'
folks found 'em and buried 'em right there