g upon a sofa in the drawing-room,
with the easy air of socially entertaining a large party.
Notwithstanding this, the house was unmistakably vacant that evening,
save for the presence of the owner, as the witness afterward testified.
When this story was first related, a few practical men suggested the
theory that Mr. Hawkins was simply drilling himself in the elaborate
duties of hospitality against a probable event in his history. A few
ventured the belief that the house was haunted. The imaginative editor
of the Five Forks "Record" evolved from the depths of his professional
consciousness a story that Hawkins's sweetheart had died, and that
he regularly entertained her spirit in this beautifully furnished
mausoleum. The occasional spectacle of Hawkins's tall figure pacing the
veranda on moonlight nights lent some credence to this theory, until an
unlooked-for incident diverted all speculation into another channel.

It was about this time that a certain wild, rude valley, in the
neighborhood of Five Forks, had become famous as a picturesque resort.
Travellers had visited it, and declared that there were more cubic yards
of rough stone cliff, and a waterfall of greater height, than any they
had visited. Correspondents had written it up with extravagant rhetoric
and inordinate poetical quotation. Men and women who had never enjoyed a
sunset, a tree, or a flower, who had never appreciated the graciousness
or meaning of the yellow sunlight that flecked their homely doorways,
or the tenderness of a midsummer's night, to whose moonlight they bared
their shirt-sleeves or their tulle dresses, came from thousands of miles
away to calculate the height of this rock, to observe the depth of this
chasm, to remark upon the enormous size of this unsightly tree, and to
believe with ineffable self-complacency that they really admired
Nature. And so it came to pass, that, in accordance with the tastes or
weaknesses of the individual, the more prominent and salient points of
the valley were christened; and there was a "Lace Handkerchief Fall,"
and the "Tears of Sympathy Cataract," and one distinguished orator's
"Peak," and several "Mounts" of various noted people, living or dead,
and an "Exclamation-Point," and a "Valley of Silent Adoration." And, in
course of time, empty soda-water bottles were found at the base of the
cataract, and greasy newspapers, and fragments of ham-sandwiches, lay
at the dusty roots of giant trees. With this, ther