e of
mullioned windows, suffused with a warm red glow from within, made it
look like part of a wintry landscape--and suggested a Christmas card.
The venerable ivy that hid the ravages time had made in its walls looked
like black carving. His heart swelled with strange emotions as he gazed
at his ancestral hall. How many of his blood had lived and died there;
how many had gone forth from that great porch to distant lands! He tried
to think of his father--a little child--peeping between the balustrades
of that terrace. He tried to think of it, and perhaps would have
succeeded had it not occurred to him that it was a known fact that his
uncle had bought the estate and house of an impoverished nobleman only
the year before. Yet--he could not tell why--he seemed to feel higher
and nobler for that trial.

The terrace was deserted, and so quiet that as he ascended to it his
footsteps seemed to echo from the walls. When he reached the portals,
the great oaken door swung noiselessly on its hinges--opened by some
unseen but waiting servitor--and admitted him to a lofty hall, dark
with hangings and family portraits, but warmed by a red carpet the whole
length of its stone floor. For a moment he waited for the servant to
show him to the drawing-room or his uncle's study. But no one appeared.
Believing this to be a part of the characteristic simplicity of the
Quaker household, he boldly entered the first door, and found himself in
a brilliantly lit and perfectly empty drawing-room. The same experience
met him with the other rooms on that floor--the dining-room displaying
an already set, exquisitely furnished and decorated table, with chairs
for twenty guests! He mechanically ascended the wide oaken staircase
that led to the corridor of bedrooms above a central salon. Here he
found only the same solitude. Bedroom doors yielded to his touch, only
to show the same brilliantly lit vacancy. He presently came upon one
room which seemed to give unmistakable signs of HIS OWN occupancy.
Surely there stood his own dressing-case on the table! and his own
evening clothes carefully laid out on another, as if fresh from a
valet's hands. He stepped hastily into the corridor--there was no one
there; he rang the bell--there was no response! But he noticed that
there was a jug of hot water in his basin, and he began dressing
mechanically.

There was little doubt that he was in a haunted house, but this did not
particularly disturb him. Indeed, he f