the very place for a mystery. As I went through some of the other
rooms with cousin Agnes in the summer twilight, I half expected to
meet Lady Ferry in every shadowy corner; but I did not dare to ask a
question. My father's words came to me,--"Such an endless life," and
"living on and on." And why had he and my mother never spoken to me
afterward of my seeing her? They had talked about it again, perhaps,
and did not mean to tell me, after all.

I saw something of the house that night, the great kitchen, with its
huge fireplace, and other rooms up stairs and down; and cousin Agnes
told me, that by daylight I should go everywhere, except to Madam's
rooms: I must wait for an invitation there.

The house had been built a hundred and fifty years before, by Colonel
Haverford, an Englishman, whom no one knew much about, except that he
lived like a prince, and would never tell his history. He and his sons
died; and after the Revolution the house was used for a tavern for
many years,--the Ferry Tavern,--and the place was busy enough. Then
there was a bridge built down the river, and the old ferry fell into
disuse; and the owner of the house died, and his family also died, or
went away; and then the old place, for a long time, was either vacant,
or in the hands of different owners. It was going to ruin at length,
when cousin Matthew bought it, and came there from the city to live
years before. He was a strange man; indeed, I know now that all the
possessors of the Ferry farm must have been strange men. One often
hears of the influence of climate upon character; there is a strong
influence of place; and the inanimate things which surround us indoors
and out make us follow out in our lives their own silent
characteristics. We unconsciously catch the tone of every house in
which we live, and of every view of the outward, material world which
grows familiar to us, and we are influenced by surroundings nearer and
closer still than the climate or the country which we inhabit. At the
old Haverford house it was mystery which one felt when one entered the
door; and when one came away, after cordiality, and days of sunshine
and pleasant hospitality, it was still with a sense of this mystery,
and of something unseen and unexplained. Not that there was any thing
covered and hidden necessarily; but it was the quiet undertone in the
house which had grown to be so old, and had known the magnificent
living of Colonel Haverford's time, and aft