'

"And now, child, put on your hat. I see Johnny Amos comin' with the
buggy, and we'll go over and see the old house."

Suppose a child should read the story of Beauty and the Beast, and
straightway a fairy godmother should appear, saying, "Now, let us go
to the palace of the Beast." If you can fancy that child's feelings,
you will know how I felt when I stepped into the old buggy to go to
Schuyler Hall.

It was a gray September afternoon. The air was warm and still, and the
earth lay weary, thirsty, and patient under a three-weeks drouth. Dust
was thick over the grass, flowers, and trees along the roadside, and
on the weed-grown fields that had brought forth their harvest for the
sons of men and now, sun-scorched and desolate, seemed to say, "Is
this the end, the end of all?"

Over the horizon there was a soft haze like smoke from the smoldering
embers of summer's dying fires, and in the west gloomed a cloud from
which the thunder and the lightning would be loosed before the
midnight hour; and after the rain would come a season of gentle suns,
cool dews, and frosts scarce colder than the dew--not spring, but a
memory of spring--when the earth, looking back to her May, would send
a ripple of green over the autumn fields, and, like thoughts of youth
in the heart of age, the clover and the dandelion would spring into
untimely bloom.

"Things look sort o' down-hearted and discouraged, don't they?" said
Aunt Jane, echoing my thought. "But jest wait till the Lord sends us
the latter rain, and things'll freshen up mightily. There's plenty o'
pretty weather to come betwixt now and winter-time. Now, child, you
jump out and open the gate, like I used to do in the days when I was
young and spry."

Old Nelly crept lazily up the long avenue, and my eyes were fixed on
the house of legend that lay at its end.

"Houses and lands are jest like pieces o' money," observed Aunt Jane.
"They pass from one hand to another, and this old place has had many
an owner since Brother Wilson's day. The man that owns it now is a
great-nephew of old Peter Cyartwright, and him and his wife's mighty
proud of the place."

"Do they object to strangers coming to see it?" I asked as we neared
the giant cypress-tree in front of the porch.

"La, child," laughed Aunt Jane. "Ain't this Kentucky? Who ever heard
of a Kentuckian objectin' to folks goin' through his house! We'll jest
walk in at the front door and out at the back door and see all that's