eturned at right
angles, to the floor above, making what is called the well of the
stairway to be exceedingly spacious, and it opened to the garret floor.

No doubt this cool, great hall was designed to be the centre of a large
mansion, yet it had lost nothing in agreeableness by becoming, instead,
the largest room in the house, receiving abundant daylight, and it was
large enough for either a feast or public worship, and such was its
frequent use.

Built by a tyrannical, eccentric man at the beginning of the century,
it had passed through several families until a Quaker named Cowgill, who
afterwards became a Methodist, and who held no slaves and was kind to
black people, made it his property, and superintended a tannery and mill
within sight of it.

He was frequently absent for weeks, especially in the bilious autumn
season, and allowed his domestics to assemble their friends and the
general race, at odd times, in the great hallway, for such rational
enjoyments as they might select.

In truth, the owner of the house desired it to get a more cheerful
reputation; for the negroes, in particular, considered it haunted.

The first owner, it was said, had amused himself in the great hall-room
by making his own children stand on their toes, switching their feet
with a whip when they dropped upon their soles from pain or fatigue; and
his own son finally shot at him through the great northern door with a
rifle or pistol, leaving the mark to this day, to be seen by a small
panel set in the original pine. The third owner, a lawyer, often
entertained travelling clergymen here; and, on one occasion, the
eccentric Reverend Lorenzo Dow met on the stairs a stranger and bowed to
him, and afterwards frightened the host's family by telling it, since
they were not aware of any stranger in the house. The room over the
great door had always been considered the haunt of peculiar people, who
molested nobody living, but appeared there in some quiet avocation, and
vanished when pressed upon.

This main door itself had a church-like character, and was battened or
built in half, so that the upper part could be thrown open like a
window, and yet the lock on this upper part was a foot and a half long,
and the key weighed a pound.

This ponderous door, in elaborate carpentry, opened upon a flight of
steps and on a flower-yard surrounded by elms, firs, and Paulownia
trees, the latter of a beany odor and nature. A lower servants' part of
the