The Haunted Homestead. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

education, and in changing her home preferred to return to her native State. Therefore Mr. Legare purchased a small estate lying within a fertile gap of the Alleghanies, to which, in the spring of the next year, he removed his family.

      Up to this time Mathilde had heard nothing directly from her Saratoga lover, but had learned, through the newspapers, that he had been nominated to represent his district in the National House of Representatives.

      Hoping much from the two circumstances of her own reduction in worldly fortune and her lover's elevation in social rank, which must bring them nearer together in position, she had called the attention of her father to the announcement of Mr. Howard's nomination; but her fond expectations were soon dissipated by the old aristocrat's comment:

      "Oh, yes, my dear, I see! Any upstart can get into Congress now. Really a private station is the seat of honor; but the comfort remains that a patrician by birth, is still a patrician, no matter how low his worldly fortunes; a plebeian is still a plebeian, even though accident or caprice may constitute him a legislator."

      "And now what shall I do, Agnes?" wrote Mathilde, after recounting these things.

      "Hope! If Mr. Howard is as constant as you appear to be, you have everything to expect from time and change ordered by Providence," was my written reply.

      I finally left school at the commencement of the summer vacation following the spring in which Mr. Legare's family removed to their mountain home in Virginia.

      It was just before the ensuing Christmas that I received an invitation from Mathilde to come up and spend the holidays with her at her father's new home.

      In extending this invitation, she wrote: "I do not know, dear Agnes, how much or how little you may feel disposed to credit these modern, so-called spiritual manifestations, these 'rappings,' 'table-tippings,' etc., but I know your strong penchant for the supernatural and your inveterate habit of ghost-hunting, and I do assure you, if it will be any inducement for you to come to us, that our home contains as inexplicable a mystery as ever frightened human habitants away, and doomed a dwelling-place to desolation and decay, and this haunting presence infests a house in a neighborhood, as yet innocent of spirit-rappings, table-tippings, and 'sich like diviltries,' as it is of railroads, steamboats and telegraph wires. But I shall say no more of this mystery until I see you 'face to face' except this, that even my unbelieving pa talks of selling the place unless the nuisance is explained and removed."

      I think that it was the existence of this darkly intimated spectre that fascinated me to the point of accepting Mathilde's invitation. Ghost-hunting was my one weakness—perhaps I should say monomania. I secretly hoped that there might be a haunted chamber in the old house and that they might put me to sleep in it; furthermore, that I might be favored with an interview with the ghost. I resolved to go. No persuasion had power to withhold me, no obstacle to prevent me. My only brother was expected home to spend Christmas, but I could not wait for him. I would, on the contrary, ask Mr. Legare to invite him to follow me. The weather was very severe, the snow covered the ground to the depth of two feet on a level, and what it might be among the ravines of the mountains I was going to cross, I feared to conjecture; nevertheless, to go I was determined.

      It was a three days' and three nights' stage ride from Winchester, where I lived with my guardian, to Wolfbrake, the home of the Legares. Accordingly, in order to reach my journey's end on Christmas Eve, I set out from home on the twentieth of December, and after three days and nights of the roughest traveling, up hill and down, through the darkest forests, along the banks of the most frightful precipices, across the rudest and most primitive bridges thrown over the most awful chasms, through mountain streams so deep and rapid that in fording them it was often hard to tell whether we rode or rowed, finally, on the evening of the twenty-fourth, I reached Frost Height, where the mules from Wolfbrake, under the charge of Uncle Judah, already awaited me.

      Although it was getting dusky, and the road down the snow-covered mountain path to Wolfbrake was not of the safest description, even by daylight, and might be considered dangerous by a starless night, yet Uncle Judah, with the hard-headedness of a favored old family servant, insisted that I should set forth immediately, as "Marse and mis' would be 'spectin'" me to supper.

      So, mounting my mule, and preceded by the old servant upon his jack, I descended into the outer darkness of the downward mountain path.

      In a little while it was quite dark, and I could neither see Judah on his jack before me, nor even the narrow path under my feet. At every step I seemed to be plunging down into some dark abysm of shadows below shadows. I could not guide my course, but trusted to the habits and sure-footedness of the mountain mule that carried me. A glimmering light, shining up from the deepest depths of the darkness below, indicated the position of Wolfbrake Lodge. There was always a strange, mystic interest felt in approaching a place like that, for the first time, amid the shadows of night. The undefined, shapeless mass of buildings, the unseen boundaries, the unknown circumstances that awaits us, all like some strange mystery, pique curiosity. And to these general subjects of interest was added the particular one of the haunting presence of which Mathilde had darkly written. I was yielding imagination up to the fascination of these dreamy speculations, when my mule, having reached the bottom, or else an obstacle of some sort—I could not in the deep darkness decide which—stopped short. And immediately I heard a sweet, familiar voice say:

      "Is that you, Uncle Judah? Did Agnes come?"

      "Yes, honey," replied the old man; and:

      "I am here! where are you, dear Mathilde?" exclaimed I, in the same instant.

      "I am in the carryall! Uncle Judah, help your Miss Agnes off, and bring her in here with me."

      In obedience, the old man lifted me out of my saddle, and, to use his own vernacular, "toted" me "through the slush," and set me in the carryall beside Mathilde. I could not see her form, but I felt her arms wound around me, and her lips against my face, searching for those other lips that quickly met hers, and then:

      "I am so overjoyed to see you, dear Agnes! It was so good of you to come!" she said. "I couldn't wait! I had to order the carryall, and come to meet you at the foot of the hill."

      We were then about a half a mile from the house. Mathilde made the boy that drove her get down and give place on the driver's seat to Uncle Judah, and then take charge of the mules, to lead them home. And so we proceeded through the snow-covered bottom toward the house.

      As I said, it was so dark that I could not clearly distinguish the outline of the buildings; but there appeared to be two houses, an old one and a new one, joined by a covered piazza, and shaded by many trees.

      We stopped before the door of the new house, from the parlor windows of which a stream of light from the lamps within was pouring.

      We were met by Mrs. Legare, who gave me a cordial welcome, and took me at once to an upper front chamber, comfortably furnished, where a fine wood fire burned, and a kettle of hot water stood upon the hearth, for the convenience of warm ablutions.

      "This is your room, my dear Agnes, where I hope you will find yourself at home," said my kind hostess.

      I thanked her, but secretly hoped that she would leave me alone with Mathilde, to hear the mystery of the haunted presence explained, for as yet we had no opportunity of a tête-à-tête.

      But the old lady lingered with motherly solicitude, until I had washed myself, and changed my traveling habit for a home dress; and then directing Jacinthe or "Jet," as she was nicknamed, to restore the room to order, she invited me down into the parlor.

      As I left the chamber, I observed Jet's eyes start out like beads, and she made a motion to follow us; but a peremptory gesture from her mistress repelled her, and she remained, though evidently terrified at the idea of being left alone.

      "Can it be possible," thought I, "that the child is afraid to stay by herself in the new house, when, of course, the supernatural inmate, if there is one, must be a denizen of the old one?"

      And at the same time I experienced a feeling of disappointed love of adventure in being accommodated with a chamber so shining in freshness and so distant in character as well as