t many notable guests of Shirley. Tradition
includes among these the Duke of Argyle, LaFayette, our own George
Washington, and the Prince of Wales.

[Illustration: THE DRAWING--ROOM.]

Here, too, are some of the oldest ghosts in America. Most of these are
quiet, well-behaved members of the household; but one ancient shade,
Aunt Pratt by name, seems to presume upon her age as old people
sometimes will, and is really quite hard to get along with.

Listen to an instance of her downright unreasonableness. Her portrait
used to hang in the drawing-room among those of the Hills (she is or
was, or however you say it, a sister of the Colonel Hill who built the
mansion); but having become injured it was taken down and put away face
to the wall. Immediately, this ghostly Aunt Pratt showed deep
resentment. Womanlike, she threw herself into a chair in one of these
bedrooms and rocked and rocked violently. Of course she disturbed the
whole household; but no matter how noiselessly people stole in to catch
her at her tantrums, she was always too quick for them--the room was
empty, the chairs all still. At last the picture was got out, repaired,
and rehung. At once all was peace and quiet; Aunt Pratt had had her
way.

CHAPTER XXIV

FROM CREEK HARBOUR TO COLONIAL RECEPTION

Eppes Creek was the most remote and isolated of all our James River
harbours. Gadabout was like a bit of civilization that had got broken
off and had drifted away into the wild. The stream was such a mere
ribbon with such tall trees along its banks, that we looked upward to
but a narrow lane of open sky. Sometimes the lane was blue, sometimes
gray, and sometimes dark and set with twinkling stars.

The wood across the creek from us was a dismal looking place. The trees
were swamp cypresses that had lost their summer green, and stood
drooping and forlorn in the low, marshy soil. Nautica wasted a good
deal of sympathy upon them as she compared them with the richly clothed
pines and the luxuriant holly upon our side of the stream.

There doubtless was game in that desolate wood; although about the only
living things that we saw in it, even when we rowed close along its
ragged shore, were owls. At night, strange, uncanny cries came out of
the wood, and probably out of the owls also; but such sad and querulous
cries as may well have been the plaints of the mournful marsh forest
itself. Upon our Shirley shore too, there lived an owl, evidently of a
differ