ting violets on his mother's grave he does
not feel like whistling and making merry. Besides, to tell the
truth,--which I do not like to shirk,--I am getting very tired of
this dismal, unlucky place. If I had known as much before I bought
it as I do now, all the locomotives in America could not have
dragged me here. I was a stranger, and of course nobody thought it
their special duty to warn me; so I was bitten badly enough by the
agent who sold me this den of misfortune. Now, when it is too
late, there is no lack of busy tongues to tell me the place is
haunted, and has been for, lo! these many years."

"Nonsense, Robert! I gave you credit for too much good sense to listen
to the gossip of silly old wives. Put all these ridiculous tales of
ghosts and hobgoblins out of your mind, man, and do not make me laugh
at you, as if you were a child who had been so frightened by stories
of 'raw-head and bloody-bones,' that you were afraid to blow out your
candle and creep into bed."

"I am neither a fool nor a coward, and I will fight anything that I
can feel has bone and muscle; but I am satisfied that if all the water
in Siloam were poured over this place, it would not wash out the curse
that people tell me has always rested on it since the time the pirates
first located here. I can't admit I believe in witches, but
undoubtedly I do believe in Satan, who seems to have a fee-simple to
the place. It is not enough that my poor mother is buried yonder, but
my wheat and oats took the rust; the mildew spoiled my grape crop; the
rains ruined my melons; the worms ate up every blade of my grass; the
cows have got the black-tongue; the gale blew down my pigeon-house and
mashed all my squabs; and my splendid carnations and fuchsias are
devoured by red spider. Nothing thrives, and I am sick at heart."

The dogged discontent written so legibly on his countenance, did not
encourage the visitor to enter into a discussion of the abstract
causes of blight, gales, and black-tongue, and he merely answered,--

"The evils you have enumerated are not peculiar to any locality; and
all the farmers in this neighborhood are echoing your complaints. How
is Mrs. Gerome?"

"Neither better nor worse. You know what miserable weather we have had
for a week. This morning she ordered the small carriage and horses
brought to the door, and when I took the reins, she dismissed me and
said she preferred driving herself. I told her the grays had not been
used,