me.

So it was, however, that I suspected nothing, although I felt sure
that mystery there was; and being of somewhat an imaginative temper, I
used to amuse myself by accounting for it in my own mind, weaving all
sorts of strange and wild romances, and inventing the most horrible
stories that can be conceived, until, as the shadows would fall dark
around me, daunted by my own conceptions, I would make all secure and
fast with trembling fingers, swing myself back across over the pool by
my accustomed oak-branch, and run home as hard as my legs could carry
me, haunted by indistinct and almost superstitious horror.

Thus things went on, until at the end of summer I was at last detected
in my stolen visits, and the whole mystery was cleared up.

I remember as clearly as if I heard it now, the exclamation of terror
and dismay uttered by the old gardener, who, having left some
implement behind him on the lawn during the morning labors, had been
forced to bend his unwilling steps back to the haunted ground to
recover it.

I could not but smile afterward, when he recounted to me his
astonishment and terror at seeing the old summer-house, which never
had been opened within the memory of man, with all its windows wide to
the free air and evening sunshine--when he told me how often he turned
back to seek aid from his fellows--how he almost believed that fiends
or evil spirits were holding their foul sabbath there, and how he
started aghast with horror, not now for himself, but for me, as he
beheld the young Etonian stretched tranquilly upon the blood-stained
couch--for those dark stains were of human gore--conning his task for
the morrow.

I rushed out of the place at his hurried outcry; a few words told my
story, and plead my excuse--with the good, simple-minded rustic little
excuse was needed--but it was not till after many sittings, and many a
long afternoon's discourse, that I learned all the details of the sad
event which had converted that fair pavilion into a place as terrible,
to the ideas of the country folks, as a dark charnel-vault.

"Ay!" said the old man, as he gazed fearfully about him, after I had
persuaded him at length to cross the dreaded threshhold, "Ay! it is
all as they tell, though not a man of them has ever seen it. There is
the glass which the bullet broke, after passing right through his
brain; and there is his blood, all spattered on the mirror. And look,
young master, those spots on the table came