nd to descend and to become visible?
Do the scattered elements of the spirit world whirl around it? Does the
impalpable take form and substance here? Insoluble riddles! A holy awe
is in the very stones; that dim twilight has surely relations with the
infinite Unknown. When the sun has gone down, the song of the birds will
be hushed, the goatherd behind the hills will go homeward with his
goats; reptiles, taking courage from the gathering darkness, will creep
through the fissures of rocks; the stars will begin to appear, night
will come, but yonder two blank casements will still be staring at the
sky. They open to welcome spirits and apparitions; for it is by the
names of apparitions, ghosts, phantom faces vaguely distinct, masks in
the lurid light, mysterious movements of minds, and shadows, that the
popular faith, at once ignorant and profound, translates the sombre
relations of this dwelling with the world of darkness.

The house is "haunted;" the popular phrase comprises everything.

Credulous minds have their explanation; common-sense thinkers have
theirs also. "Nothing is more simple," say the latter, "than the history
of the house. It is an old observatory of the time of the revolutionary
wars and the days of smuggling. It was built for such objects. The wars
being ended, the house was abandoned; but it was not pulled down, as it
might one day again become useful. The door and windows have been walled
to prevent people entering, or doing injury to the interior. The walls
of the windows, on the three sides which face the sea, have been bricked
up against the winds of the south and south-west. That is all."

The ignorant and the credulous, however, are not satisfied. In the first
place, the house was not built at the period of the wars of the
Revolution. It bears the date "1780," which was anterior to the
Revolution. In the next place it was not built for an observatory. It
bears the letters "ELM-PBILG," which are the double monogram of two
families, and which indicate, according to usage, that the house was
built for the use of a newly-married couple. Then it has certainly been
inhabited: why then should it be abandoned? If the door and windows were
bricked up to prevent people entering the house only, why were two
windows left open? Why are there no shutters, no window-frames, no
glass? Why were the walls bricked in on one side if not on the other?
The wind is prevented from entering from the south; but why is it