grown up thickly around the lower
story of the house, and tangled vines, creeping in through the broken
panes of the windows, hung in festoons from the moss-covered sills.
The door had dropped from its hinges, and on one side of the front the
boards had fallen off, so that I could see quite into the interior,
where I noticed, with surprise, some furniture yet remained, though in
great confusion, a broken chair and an overturned table being the most
prominent objects. Outside, the same disorder was manifest in the great
farm-wagon, left standing where it had last been used, and the neglected
out-buildings fast going to decay. About the whole place there was an
aspect of peculiar gloom, and the house itself stood on this bleak hill
looking out over the lonesome landscape with a sort of tragic melancholy
in its black and weather-beaten front.

Now such a sight as this is very rare in our busy New England, where
everything is turned to advantage, and where the thrifty owner of a
tenement too old for habitation is sure to tear it down and convert the
materials of which it is built to some other use. My curiosity was,
therefore, at once excited regarding this place, and I turned to my
uncle with an inquiry as to its history.

"It is a very sad one," he answered,--"so sad that it gives a terrible
dreariness to this solitary spot."

"Then I am sure you will tell me the causes which led to its desertion.
You know how much I like a story."

My uncle complied with the request, and, as we wended our way home
through the deepening twilight, related a series of strange facts,
which, at the time, took a powerful hold on my imagination, and which I
have since endeavored to group into a continuous narrative.

* * * * *

This house, now so forlorn, was once a neat and happy home. It was built
by a young farmer named James Blount, who went into it with his young
wife when he brought her home from the distant State where he had
married her. For several years they seemed very prosperous and happy;
then a heavy affliction came. The healthy young farmer was thrown from
his horse, and carried to his home only to linger a few terrible hours
and expire in great agony. Thus early in its history was the doomed
house overshadowed with the gloom of sudden and violent death.

Every one was heartily sorry for the widow with her two little boys,
and the people of the country-side did all that they could to cheer
h