Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1900-12-31
AN ARIZONA GHOST STORY.


why it had been sent to me and by
whom, my eye presently fell on blue
penciled paragraph:
Marshal Catlip and posse got back
late last evening. They had a Lively
chase-and there is one bad man the
less. 1t won't cost this town anything
to try him. Dive Tranchard needed a
change. He was too fond Of horse
tlesh-other peoples"
Probably Arizonians understood that
| paragraph perfectly at first sight, and
! it intimated even to u slow New Eng
lander that Dive Tranchard" had
been sternly punished.
"Dive Tranchard"' Something in
the name set the chords of memory
vaguely vibrating ali day, and when
l walked next morning, the full, IA
miliar name had come to me out of the
past-Dives Tranchard! 1t must be he
the queer boy" of the school where
1 first began as teacher in kennebec
county, Maine, 20 years ago.
l was then only IS years old, and
the school agent who hired me and
the good minister-member of the school
board who gave ME my certificate"
said that | might pull through If
could manage Dives Tranchard.
In the schoolroom, Dives did not ap-
pear formidable at first view, but [
was not long in discovering the fer
tility of his mischievous ingenuity.
The wits of the average schOolmaster
could not possibly keep pace with the
swift trickiness in which he INDUCED
himself.
He was n somewhat sedate and dis
clear-cut, refined face, and the incon-
sistency between his countcnance and
his conduct was such that | never was
able to feel, during the whole time he
was my pupil, that 1 quite understood
him.
Dives was an orphan, who while
still very young, had been adopted by
the storekeeper Of the place, Mr.. Mul-
hall.
His father had been very intem-
7
dearest delight had been to rail ut the
Scriptures. In profane bravado he
had named his three sons Judas, To
phet and Dives. The two former had
died of Group while very young, and
Dives, or 'Dive," as he was generally
called, was the sole survivor of the
family.
Naturally, a teacher only 1S years
old could not hope to assume the role
of moral adviser to youth of II with
entire success.
When l attempted it with Dives he
grinned in my face, and the effort end
ed in a rough-and-tumble fight over the
schoolhouse floor. In this conflict l es-
tablished n kind of doubtful suZer-
ainty over him, and afterward main
tanned it with n bold front, but the
issue was always in some little doubt.
What the outcome would have been
is far from certain. | have n feeling
| that Dives would have been too much
for me, in time, had our relations as
pupil and pedagogue continued long.
But they lasted only three weeks. On
the first day of January he ran away,
in consequence of curious prank.
District Number Eleven was the only
place where l ever saw what was be-
lieved to be a ghost. The people there
were not superstltious, but l found
that many of them had seen an ap-
partition that they could not account
for. 1t had been seen three times the
previous winter and once late in No
vember, few days before | arrived.
More than 20 persons admitted that
they had seen it during snow storms,
| but all made light of it; the people
were not ignorant, and the apparition
puzzled them much more than it
frightened them.
| The mysterious thing, whatever It
was, had always been seen at night,
and seemed to be n kind ofphantom on
horseback, an equestrian ghost, so as
to speak.
1t had been discerned passing at
great speed, but the hoofs m.le no
noise, and it looked thin, or white,
and was hardly distinguishablr in out
line amidst the falling snowaakes.
That was about all / could learn re-
garding the phantom; and as the repre-
sentative of education, set myself to
discountenance belief in the spectre.
My theories We're received with re-
spect the only difficulty in the way of
their entire acceptance was that num-
bers of those who listened to me had
really seen the ghost
| 1t was a place where the people re-
tanned many of the old customs of an
cestral Puritan England, among others
that ''of watch-night," or watching the
| old year out and the new year in, on
the night of December 31st. 1t was
announced at the meeting house the
previous Sunday that there would be Il
watch-night the following Saturday
evening, to last half past twelve, New
Years morning. There would be sing
ing and prayers, but it was not to be
III i,riA