tooth of an uneasy conscience,-its silence is full of inexplic able sound, its darkness flashes with mysterious light,— its very exterior is believed to have some indefinable peculiarity. Strange whispers-originating no one knows where, and swelling no one knows how-are afloat concerning it; and people who do not believe them in their hearts, are ready enough to give them currency with their lips. By and by, children are afraid to pass it after nightfall; and their elders glance at it half-curiously, half-nervously, reasoning vaguely within themselves that, where there is so much of inference, there ought, for consistency's sake, to be some small residuum of fact. The eerie character of the house is established. It will take years of commonplace occupancy to obliterate its claim to a dismal distinction; and a long course of the plodding prose of daily life to dispel the half-poetic charm that environs it.

Mrs. Prescott's house is of this class. Its one undeniable peculiarity is, that it has never had either a birth or a death under its roof;-a curious enough fact, in a dwelling that is nearly a century old; but explicable by the shifting character of its occupancy. It has missed, therefore, somewhat of that gentle consecration of love and grief, which makes the walls of a genuine home half sacred in their aspect and influence,—and a dim recognition thereof is, doubtless, latent in the feeling with which it is regarded.

If you ask, generally, of its history, you will be told that it was built, and first occupied, by a strange, silent family; that came nobody knew whence, lived nobody knew how, and went nobody knew whither. To this will be appended the vaguest tale—with hardly enough of definite outline to be anywise transferable to paper-of three fair daughters, who were visited one by one, with some inscrutable and malignant fate; and waxed unutterably wan and spirit-like under its touch; and slowly faded out of existence (but not in the house, its mysterious immunity from death must needs have prevented that); and whose spirits had been

seen flitting through the dense shadow of the orchard, on moonlight nights. If you push your inquiries more particularly, however, you will succeed in extracting as much information about this unknown family as could reasonably be expected to survive it; in a community where it had not sojourned long enough to establish, by means of inter-marriage, birth, death, and familiar intercourse, any abiding claim upon its sympathies. The real truth seeming to be, that the Gwynnes (for such was their name) had once known better days; had here found a brief foothold upon the slippery bank of Oblivion; and, sliding thence, had made that final plunge beneath its dark waters, beyond which none but attached friends and hound-scented lawyers would care to follow them. After them, came a number of tenancies, of the briefest individual duration; and then, a long period of emptiness and neglect, during which rumors. and conjectures thickened around the deserted dwelling, not less rapidly than the dust gathered on its floors, and the mosses and lichens on its roof.

Finally, Mr. Prescott, his health having failed him in a neighboring town, pitched upon it as a convenient residence for the remainder of his own fast lapsing life; and one, moreover, where his wife, in the event of her being left a widow, would be within easy reach of the kindly offices and sympathies of her paternal home. If the shrewd New Englander had any unacknowledged idea of cheating death of his lawful prey, in his own case, by removing to a house that was reported to enjoy an immunity from his dread visitations, the event proved, to the great edification of curious lookers-on, how equally inevitable were the stroke of doom, and the mysterious spell that hedged round his dwelling. Mr. Prescott died, suddenly, at a wayside inn, while on a short journey; and, in curious confirmation of the received theory that death was, in no shape, to enter that charmed precinct, he was never again permitted to cross the threshold of his home. For, on the arrival of

his remains, it was found that their natural course of decay had been so hastened by the extreme heat of the weather, as to make it inexpedient to admit them within the dwelling. They rested, therefore, in the broad, cool shadow of the maples in the dooryard; while knots of friends gathered near, and prayers were said, and hymns sung, and all the sombre routine and paraphernalia of woe went on around them according to their dismal wont; and then, they went forth to seek admittance into that narrow, but hospitable house, which opens its doors to all comers alike, and refuses not its kindly shelter to any amount nor degree of material or moral pollution.

In due course of time, the increasing years and corresponding infirmities of Mrs. Divine, and the troubles that befell Mrs. Prescott in managing her farm, brought about the removal of the latter to the old homestead, and the consolidation of the two households. It was then duly whispered around that either Alice or her mother had been selected for the Destroyer's next stroke, and that it had become inevitably necessary for the unconscious victim to seek out an available spot wherein to die,-the Gwynne Place, as everybody knew, being absolutely ineligible to such an undertaking;—a prediction which, I scarcely need say, still awaits fulfilment. Its terrors are now, however, transferred to William Dunn,-whose future career will be honored with an amount of interest, on this account, that would scarcely have been accorded to it, upon its own merits. If any casualty happens to himself; or if measles, scarlet fever, or any of the ills which childhood is heir to, makes a break in the line of his progeny, during the next few years;-that will be accounted the occult cause for the expulsion, of which Mrs. Prescott, in her zeal to provide her clergyman with a suitable abode, is only the blind, irresponsible agent.

All this or as much of it as could be told without jarring upon Mrs. Prescott's sensibilities-we made known to

Mr. Taylor, while our little party of five traversed the "short cut across lots" between the Divine homestead and the Gwynne Place. Mr. Taylor had stayed to dinner, which accounts for his presence with us; and I had made sure of Ruth by going after her. At first, she had been silent and ill-at-ease; sending shy, surreptitious glances around her, in the evident expectation and dread of surprising a look of pity, of contempt, or of dislike, upon some unguarded face; but, of course, finding none, and constantly growing brighter and more courageous thereby. And Alice, as might be expected, had been quick to understand and to second my efforts to make her feel that we were glad to have her with us; without treating it as if it were an unusual occurrence, calling for either question or comment. So she had gradually drifted to her natural place among us; and her spirits, having flung aside their dreary, habitual weight, were fast rising to the sunny level of the scene and the time,—into harmony with the shining verdure, the singing brook, the merry chirp of insects, the rich warm glow of the early-afternoon sun.

For her sake I made an unwonted effort to be gay. I seized eagerly, therefore, upon every chance for merriment afforded by the peculiarities of the house which Mr. Taylor was so soon to occupy. I ran rapidly over a list of divers charms and counter-charms in repute among different nations, from the horse-shoe of the Saxon to the monda of the African; discussed, in a serio-comic manner, their efficacy and adaptation to the case in hand; and deplored the impossibility of procuring a fetich of gorilla's brain, or the tail of a leopard, to imbue Mr. Taylor's heart with courage proportioned to his probable or possible needs! I rattled on lightly enough, no doubt, considering the many points where the subject touched unavoidably upon serious things; but my one object was to bring out the fitful smiles upon Ruth's face; and whenever her gleeful, birdlike laugh rang out over the meadow (it is astonishing how

P

joyous her laugh is, when her voice seems to be possessed with the very spirit of melancholy !), I congratulated myself upon so much gained, and cast about for some fresh absurdity to utter. In due time I found my reward. Ruth began to answer, as well as to listen and laugh; and her gayety, when it came, was far more genuine and spontaneous than mine.

Mr. Taylor listened to us, for awhile, with a very amused face. Then it grew so burdened with thought that Mrs. Prescott, concluding that he stood in need of encouragement, came to the rescue.

"It's all nonsense," she began, in her quick, decided way. "I can assure you, Mr. Taylor, that the house is as good a house, and as quiet a house, as there is in Shiloh. I lived there four years, and I never heard a sound that I couldn't find a good reason for; nor saw anything more ghostlike in the orchard than a white cow, or calf, or something of that sort. And as for the 'spell' that Miss Frost makes so much of, I don't believe a bit more in that! If you live there long enough, you'll die there, I guess. I only wish you might, you and all your family!"

The letter of this wish, in spite of its unmistakable friendliness of spirit, provoked so general a smile, that Mrs. Prescott felt herself called upon to add an explanatory remark or two, which, however, did not greatly mend the matter.

"You all know what I mean, well enough. St. Jude's hasn't had a rector for over a year or two, at a time, since 'twas built; and I'd like to have one stay long enough to die here once, that's all."

"Thank you," said Mr. Taylor, bowing half-courteously, half-humorously. "I only hope Shiloh and I may suit each other well enough to make such a length of sojourn desirable. But I ought to assure you, Mrs. Prescott, that the evil reputation of the premises has no terrors for me. And as for the spell,' Miss Frost, I have no desire to break