The house stands remote, more than a mile
from its nearest neighbour. It is empty; has been stripped of its
furniture, of everything. What should any one be doing there?

What is _he_ doing there? A question which would suggest itself to one
seeing him; with interest added on making note of his movements.

There is no one to do either; and he continues on to the house, making
for its back door, where there is a porch, as also a covered way,
leading to a log-cabin--the kitchen.

Even as within the porch, he tries the handle of the door which at a
touch goes open. There is no lock, or if there was, it has not been
thought worth while to turn the key in it. There are no burglars in the
backwoods. If there were, nothing in that house need tempt them.

Its nocturnal visitor enters under its roof. The ring of his footsteps,
though he still treads cautiously, gives out a sad, solemn sound. It is
in unison with the sighs that come, deep-drawn, from his breast; at
times so sonorous as to be audible all over the house.

He passes from room to room. There are not many--only five of them. In
each he remains a few moments, gazing dismally around. But in one--that
which was the widow's sleeping chamber--he tarries a longer time;
regarding a particular spot--the place formerly occupied by a bed. Then
a sigh, louder than any that has preceded it, succeeded by the words,
low-muttered:--

"There she must have breathed her last!"

After this speech, more sighing, accompanied by still surer signs of
sorrow--sobs and weeping. As the moonbeams, pouring in through the open
window, fall upon his face, their pale silvery light sparkles upon
tears, streaming from hollow eyes, chasing one another down emaciated
cheeks.

After surrendering himself some minutes to what appears a very agony of
grief, he turns out of the sleeping chamber; passes through the narrow
hall-way; and on into the porch. Not now the back one, but that facing
front to the road.

On the other side of this is an open tract of ground, half cleared, half
woodland; the former sterile, the latter scraggy. It seems to belong to
no one, as if not worth claiming, or cultivating. It has been, in fact,
an appanage of Colonel Armstrong's estate, who had granted it to the
public as the site for a schoolhouse, and a common burying-ground--free
to all desiring to be instructed, or needing to be interred. The
schoolhouse has disappeared, but the cemetery is still