.

Mr. Bangs was neither pleased with the hotel, or able to get much
information while there, and consequently changed his quarters to Mrs.
Deck's boarding-house, a long, rambling brick building, that at one time
had been a fine residence after the Southern style. It was covered with
moss and vines, and had a snug, pleasant appearance, while everything
about the house had an air of quaint, attractive restfulness. Every
person who has ever been in Terre Haute for a few days' stay, as Bangs
was, will remember the genial old soul who presided over the destinies
of this particular boarding-house--the fat, garrulous, whimpering, but
kind-hearted Mrs. Deck; her charming daughter, the blooming Belle
Ruggles, by a former and more fortunate marriage, with her fair face and
wealth of golden hair, flitting about the house--which was also the
abode of spirits, mysterious materializations and unexplainable
rappings--like a good, sensible spirit that _she_ was, and letting her
good sense and kind ways into the cobwebbed rooms and dark places, like
an ever-changing though constant flood of sunlight; and "Old Deck," as
the boys called him, who believed in another kind of spirits still, and,
when opportunity offered, became so full of them that he held a grand
and extended "seance" on his own account.

People not only sought Mrs. Deck for good board, but for reliable
neighborhood gossip; and Mr. Bangs, learning of her reputation as a
repository of news as well as a liberal dispenser of creature comforts,
changed his quarters from the hotel to her place, and found from a few
days in her company that she was a sort of historian, having at her
tongue's end numberless incidents connected with the growth of the city
and the family relations of every class of people in or near it.

He learned from her where the Hosfords had lived, but could get nothing
particular regarding the woman herself, as Mrs. Deck had never seen her,
and only knew of her by reputation, which she was sure had been good.

Mr. Bangs at once went into the country neighborhood where the Hosfords
had lived, and found that they had removed to some point in Wisconsin,
near Sheboygan Falls, the neighbors had heard, but he could not find
that there had been a single trace of trouble at Terre Haute. All those
who had known them spoke of them both in the highest terms. They had
both been staunch members of the Methodist Church, and though plain,
quiet farmers, had been consider