r study and
scientific research. He has no children, and his only servant being a
deaf-mute, who is almost an idiot, there is little chance at present of
learning anything of his life. For more than two years nothing has been
seen of the mysterious master of the house. His disappearance would, we
think, be a legitimate subject of investigation by the authorities
of the town. May he not have been eaten by the lion, or killed by the
rattlesnakes? Who knows?"

My heart was beating fast and my hands shook as if stricken with palsy
before I had finished the paragraph. The strange old man who had come
to me in Liverpool that night was probably the mute servant to which
the article referred. In an hour I was on the way to Ogdensburg, quite
confident that the issue of my wanderings was at hand. I reached that
town next morning nearly two years, as I have said, after the beginning
of my journey to the New World. Not stopping to breakfast even, I
started out to find the house, which my busy imagination had already
pictured for itself. The first townsman I saw directed me to the place.

"Follow the turnpike," said he. "'Sa mild or more--straight ahead.
You'll know it when y' git there. 'S' queer place an' stan's off by
itself."

The man was going my way, evidently to begin his day's work, for it was
then early in the morning, and I walked along with him.

"Folks say," he continued, "them grounds is full of hejious reptyles,
an' I've heerd fellers tell queer things they've seen when passin' there
at night--red lights a-flyin' about an' spooks at the winders. An' one
night, when Uncle Bill Jemson was comin' down the turnpike, they was a
storm come up, an' jest as he got opposite the big iron gate they was a
flash a lightnin'--an' Bill says he see the ole man, his long white hair
a-flyin' in th' wind, an' a lion standin' there in front a th' house.
Th' flash was out'n a minit, an' Bill whipped up his hosses an' sent em
clear to Mills' tavern on the dead run," said he, laughing as if it were
a good joke.

"They don't nobody like th' place ner th' man, though I don' know why,
fer no one's ever passed a word with him in these parts. There 'tis,
over yender with the pines around it an' th' high wall," said he,
pointing with his finger. But my eye had already discovered the
low-built rambling house on the high banks of the river, well in the
distance, and had recognized it at once.

Leaving my companion at the next turn in the road