The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Old Stone House and Other Stories, by
Anna Katharine Green

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Title: The Old Stone House and Other Stories

Author: Anna Katharine Green

Release Date: June 13, 2007 [eBook #21824]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE OLD STONE HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES

by

ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

Short Story Index Reprint Series

Books for Libraries Press
Freeport, New York
First Published 1891

CONTENTS.

THE OLD STONE HOUSE

A MEMORABLE NIGHT

THE BLACK CROSS

A MYSTERIOUS CASE

SHALL HE WED HER?

THE OLD STONE HOUSE.

I was riding along one autumn day through a certain wooded portion of
New York State, when I came suddenly upon an old stone house in which
the marks of age were in such startling contrast to its unfinished
condition that I involuntarily stopped my horse and took a long survey
of the lonesome structure. Embowered in a forest which had so grown in
thickness and height since the erection of this building that the
boughs of some of the tallest trees almost met across its decayed
roof, it presented even at first view an appearance of picturesque
solitude almost approaching to desolation. But when my eye had time to
note that the moss was clinging to eaves from under which the
scaffolding had never been taken, and that of the ten large windows in
the blackened front of the house only two had ever been furnished
with frames, the awe of some tragic mystery began to creep over me,
and I sat and wondered at the sight till my increasing interest
compelled me to alight and take a nearer view of the place.

The great front door which had been finished so many years ago, but
which had never been hung, leaned against the side of the house, of
which it had almost become a part, so long had they clung together
amid the drippings of innumerable rains. Close beside it yawned the
entrance, a large black gap throu