die had not money enough left to put up a decent tombstone at the
head of his grave. He had a queer idea that he would like to have
his town all finished before anybody lived in it, and so he kept on
working and spending money year after year and year after year until
the city was done and he had not a cent left. During all the time
that the place was building hundreds of people came to him to buy
houses, or to hire them, but he would not listen to anything of the
kind. No one must live in his town until it was all done. Even his
workmen were obliged to go away at night to lodge. It is a town,
sirs, I am told, in which nobody has slept for even a night. There
are streets there, and places of business, and churches, and public
halls, and everything that a town full of inhabitants could need;
but it is all empty and deserted, and has been so as far back as I
can remember, and I came to this region when I was a little boy."

"And is there no one to guard the place?" we asked; "no one to
protect it from wandering vagrants who might choose to take
possession of the buildings?"

"There are not many vagrants in this part of the country," he said,
"and if there were they would not go over to that city. It is
haunted."

"By what?" we asked.

"Well, sirs, I scarcely can tell you; queer beings that are not
flesh and blood, and that is all I know about it. A good many people
living hereabouts have visited that place once in their lives, but I
know of no one who has gone there a second time."

"And travellers," I said, "are they not excited by curiosity to
explore that strange uninhabited city?"

"Oh yes," our host replied; "almost all visitors to the valley go
over to that queer city--generally in small parties, for it is not a
place in which one wishes to walk about alone. Sometimes they see
things and sometimes they don't. But I never knew any man or woman
to show a fancy for living there, although it is a very good town."

This was said at supper-time, and, as it was the period of full
moon, Bentley and I decided that we would visit the haunted city
that evening. Our host endeavored to dissuade us, saying that no one
ever went over there at night; but as we were not to be deterred he
told us where we would find his small boat tied to a stake on the
river-bank. We soon crossed the river, and landed at a broad but low
stone pier, at the land end of which a line of tall grasses waved in
the gentle night wind as if they wer