Surprise
Chapter XI. Lizzie

CHAPTER I.

MRS. HAMILTON.

For many years the broad, rich acres, and old-fashioned, massive
building known as "The Homestead on the Hillside," had passed
successively from father to son, until at last it belonged by right of
inheritance to Ernest Hamilton. Neither time nor expense had been
spared in beautifying and embellishing both house and grounds, and at
the time of which we are speaking there was not for miles around so
lovely a spot as was the shady old homestead.

It stood at some distance from the road, and on the bright green lawn
in front were many majestic forest trees, on which had fallen the
lights and shadows of more than a century; and under whose
widespreading branches oft, in the olden time, the Indian warrior had
paused from the chase until the noonday heat was passed. Leading from
the street to the house was a wide, graveled walk bordered with box,
and peeping out from the wilderness of vines and climbing roses were
the white walls of the huge building, which was surrounded on all
sides by a double piazza.

Many and hallowed were the associations connected with that old
homestead. On the curiously-carved seats beneath the tall shade trees
were cut the names of some who there had lived, and loved, and passed
away. Through the little gate at the foot of the garden and just
across the brooklet, whose clear waters leaped and laughed in the
glad sunshine, and then went dancing away in the woodland below, was a
quiet spot, where gracefully the willow tree was bending, where the
wild sweetbrier was blooming, and where, too, lay sleeping those who
once gathered round the hearthstone and basked in the sunlight which
ever seemed resting upon the Homestead on the Hillside.

But a darker day was coming; a night was approaching when a deep gloom
would overshadow the homestead and the loved ones within its borders.
The servants, ever superstitious, now whispered mysteriously that the
spirits of the departed returned nightly to their old accustomed
places, and that dusky hands from the graves of the slumbering dead
were uplifted, as if to warn the master of the domain of the
desolation; which was to come. For more than a year the wife of Ernest
Hamilton had been dying--slowly, surely dying--and though when the
skies were brightest and the sunshine warmest she ever seemed better,
each morning's light still revealed some fresh ravage the disease had
made, until at