at Andy was up to now! There was no
shaking him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to me; and I felt
that if I remained much longer at Bayley's Four-Corners I should
turn into just such another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary as Silas
Jaffrey.

Then the tavern was a grewsome old shell any way, full of unaccountable
noises after dark--rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages,
and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of
an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a
musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the
wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air
like the elbow of the late Mr. Clem Jaffrey. Sometimes,

"In the dead vast and middle of the night,"

I used to hear sounds as if some one were turning that rusty crank on
the sly. This occurred only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived
the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family ghosts, from the
neglected graveyard in the cornfield, keeping themselves warm by running
each other through the mangle. There was a haunted air about the whole
place that made it easy for me to believe in the existence of a phantasm
like Miss Mehetabel's son, who, after all, was less unearthly than Mr.
Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe
than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention the silent
Witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over the bar-room fire.

In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let
slip no opportunity to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy,
Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together--those long autumnal
evenings, through the length of which he talked about the boy, laying
out his path in life and hedging the path with roses. He should be sent
to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be
educated like a gentleman, Andy.

"When the old man dies," remarked Mr. Jaffrey one night, rubbing his
hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, "Andy will find that the
old man has left him a pretty plum."

"What do you think of having Andy enter West Point, when he 's old
enough?" said Mr. Jaffrey on another occasion. "He need n't necessarily
go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer."

This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect that I could
accept it without immodesty.

There had lately sprun