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just like a boy would roll himself in a quilt, and not a strip was left on me. I jumped out of bed in a second, and observing that Kate had rolled up in the cover, the thought struck me, 'I have got you now, you rascal, and will burn you up.'
    "In an instant I grabbed the roll of cover in my arms and started to the fire. It was very weighty and smelled awful. I had not gone halfway across the room before the luggage got so heavy and became so offensive that I was compelled to drop it on the floor and rush out of doors for a breath of fresh air. The odor emitted from the roll was the most offensive stench I ever smelled. It was absolutely stifling, and I could not have endured it another second.
    "After being refreshed I returned to the room and gathered up the roll of bedclothing and shook it out, but Kate had departed and there was no unusual weight or offensive odor remaining. And that is just how near I came to catching the witch."
    One of the Spirit's less attractive attributes was its vulgarly outspoken antipathy toward the family slaves. I will not comment at length on this barbaric custom, except to say that the relationship between master and slave on these western farms was quite different from the one that prevailed on the great eastern plantations, which might employ hundreds of persons. Mr. Bell worked closely with his slaves, many of whom had grown up in the family. Religious doctrine frowned on cruelty to slaves—though it condoned that greater injustice, slavery itself—and in that close-knit community a man could not mistreat his servants without the fact being known and censured by his peers. Slaveowners like the Bells viewed the servants with a kind of contemptuous affection. They cherished the fond delusion that their affection was returned, and perhaps, in some cases, it was. But beneath the seeming docility and the servile references to little Missy and dear old Massa must have boiled a sea of burning resentment.
    The Spirit hated "niggers." This is a word the Bells would never have used, and in other ways the Spirit's behavior toward persons of the Negro race resembled that of the lowest and least educated classes in society. Being a social snob, it preferred the amenities of the master's house to the poor cabins of the slaves, and was never known to invade their quarters. But if one of the servants ventured outside after dark he might meet something he had not bargained for.
    A young man named Harry, who was in his teens when the Spirit first appeared, lived to a ripe old age and was still working for the Bell family fifty years later. The children called him "Uncle Hack" and loved to listen to his stories of his encounter with the Spirit. We may be sure that these tales lost none of their dramatic content over the years.
    One of Harry's chores was tending the fires, no light task when fireplaces were the only source of heat and wood was the only fuel. Like all young people, Harry liked to sleep late when he could get away with it. Winters in Tennessee can be chilly, and Mr. Bell was an early riser; it vexed him to rise from his warm bed and find that Harry had not started the fire.
    He cannot have been a harsh master, for Harry was so unimpressed by the scoldings he received that he continued to sleep in. One morning he was very late. As he knelt by the hearth trying to blow the coals into flame, a piece of kindling rose into the air and applied itself to the seat of his trousers. Harry's attempts to avoid the missile were in vain. Invisible hands seized him, threw him across a chair, and smacked him harder than before. The sounds of the blows and the poor lad's cries were heard all over the house. John Bell came running. When the Spirit finally left off chastising the lad, he warned Harry that if he was late again he would be beaten to death and thrown into the fire.
    We may be sure Harry was on time after that. In order to make his morning task easier, he carried in wood and kindling the night