grown and curling, the grass was uncut.
The weeds about the entrances and rotting well-curb grew tall and dank;
the appearance of things in general was far from gay. Clouds had
overcast the sky, and on that dull afternoon a sort of still deadliness
hung about the premises. No cheap, common house can be a haunted house.
Ghosts like good architecture, especially when it has become pretty
antique, and they have a passion for neglected door-yards. The place
lacked nothing that I could see to make it attractive to even the most
fastidious wandering wraith. As I say, I think this was not my first
impression, but certainly it was about the next one, and I could see by
her face that it was Elizabeth's.

"Place wants trimming up," said Mr. Westbury, producing a big brass key,
"and the house needs some work on it, but the frame is as sound as ever
it was. Been standing there going on two hundred years--hewn oak and
hard as iron. We'll go inside."

We climbed down rather silently. I felt a tendency to step softly, for
fear of waking something. The big key fitted the back door, and we
followed Mr. Westbury. He told us, as we entered, that the place
belonged to his wife and her sister--that they had been born there;
also, their father, their grandmother, and their great-grandfather,
which was as far back as they knew, though the house had always been in
the family. Through a little hallway we entered a square room of
considerable size. It had doors opening into two smaller rooms, and to
one much larger--long and low, so low that, being a tall person, my hair
brushed the plaster. Just in the corner where we entered there was an
astonishingly big fireplace to which Mr. Westbury waved a sort of
salute.

"There is a real antique for you," he said.

There was no question as to that. The opening, which included a Dutch
oven, was fully seven feet wide, and the chimney-breast no less than
ten. The long, narrow mantel-shelf was scarcely a foot below the
ceiling. It took our breath a little--it was so much better than
anything we had hoped for. We forgot that this was a haunted house. It
had become all at once a sort of a dream house in which mentally we
began placing all the ancient furnishings we had been gathering since
our far-off van-dwelling days. There was a big hole in the plaster, but
it was a small matter. We hardly saw it. What we saw was the long, low
room, with its wide wainscoting and quaint double windows, and ranged
about