gh which nearly a century of storms
had rushed with their winds and wet till the lintels were green with
moisture and slippery with rot. Standing on this untrod threshold, I
instinctively glanced up at the scaffolding above me, and started as I
noticed that it had partially fallen away, as if time were weakening
its supports and making the precipitation of the whole a threatening
possibility. Alarmed lest it might fall while I stood there, I did not
linger long beneath it, but, with a shudder which I afterwards
remembered, stepped into the house and proceeded to inspect its
rotting, naked, and unfinished walls. I found them all in the one
condition. A fine house had once been planned and nearly completed,
but it had been abandoned before the hearths had been tiled, or the
wainscoting nailed to its place. The staircase which ran up through
the centre of the house was without banisters but otherwise finished
and in a state of fair preservation. Seeing this and not being able to
resist the temptation which it offered me of inspecting the rest of
the house, I ascended to the second story.

Here the doors were hung and the fireplaces bricked, and as I wandered
from room to room I wondered more than ever what had caused the
desertion of so promising a dwelling. If, as appeared, the first owner
had died suddenly, why could not an heir have been found, and what
could be the story of a place so abandoned and left to destruction
that its walls gave no token of ever having offered shelter to a human
being? As I could not answer this question I allowed my imagination
full play, and was just forming some weird explanation of the facts
before me when I felt my arm suddenly seized from behind, and paused
aghast. Was I then not alone in the deserted building? Was there some
solitary being who laid claim to its desolation and betrayed jealousy
at any intrusion within its mysterious precincts? Or was the dismal
place haunted by some uneasy spirit, who with long, uncanny fingers
stood ready to clutch the man who presumed to bring living hopes and
fears into a spot dedicated entirely to memories? I had scarcely the
courage to ask, but when I turned and saw what it was that had alarmed
me, I did not know whether to laugh at my fears or feel increased awe
of my surroundings. For it was the twigs of a tree which had seized
me, and for a long limb such as this to have grown into a place
intended for the abode of man, necessitated a lapse of ti