and its magnificent view of the
Hudson. His desk, which many remember (it has a place in the present
house, I believe), was so located that for forty years or more he had
this prospect ever before him, a prospect which included the sight of
his own pavilion, around which, for no cause apparent to his
contemporaries, he had caused a high wall to be built, effectually
shutting in both trees and building.

This wall has since been removed; but I have often heard it spoken of,
and always with a certain air of mystery; possibly because, as I have
said, there seemed no good reason for its erection, the place holding no
treasure and the gate standing always open; possibly because of its
having been painted, in defiance of all harmony with everything about
the place, a dazzling white; and possibly because it had not been raised
till after the death of the judge's first wife, who, some have said,
breathed her last within the precincts it inclosed.

However that may be, there seems to be no doubt that this place exerted,
very likely against his will, for he never visited it, a singular
fascination over the secretive mind of this same upright but strangely
taciturn ancestor of the Ocumpaughs. For during the forty years in which
he wrote and read at this desk, the shutters guarding the door
overlooking those decaying walls were never drawn to, or so the
tradition runs; and when he died, it was found that, by a clause in his
will, this pavilion, hut or bungalow, all of which names it bore at
different stages of its existence, was recommended to the notice of his
heirs as an object which they were at liberty to leave in its present
forsaken condition, though he did not exact this, but which was never,
under any circumstances or to serve any purpose, to be removed from its
present site, or even to suffer any demolition save such as came with
time and the natural round of the seasons, to whose tender mercies he
advised it to be left. In other words, it was to stand, and to stand
unmolested, till it fell of its own accord, or was struck to the earth
by lightning--a tragic alternative in the judgment of those who knew it
for a structure of comparative insignificance, and one which, in the
minds of many, and perhaps I may say in my own, appeared to point to
some serious and unrevealed cause not unlinked with the almost forgotten
death of that young wife to which I have just alluded.

This was years ago, far back in the fifties, and his