for the last few minutes had been gradually settling into sterner and sterner lines, nodded automatically but did not look up from the horse he was driving.

"Who lives in these houses? Old friends of yours?" Frank continued.

Edgar nodded again, whipped his horse and for an instant allowed his eyes to wander up and down the road.

"I used to know them all," he acknowledged, "but I suppose there have been changes."

[5] His tone had altered, his very frame had stiffened. Frank looked at him curiously.

[5]

"You seem to be in a hurry," he remarked. "I enjoy this twilight drive, and—haloo! this is an odd old place we are coming to. Suppose you pull up and let me look at it."

His companion, with a strange glance and an awkward air of dissatisfaction, did as he was bid, and Frank leaning from the buggy gazed long and earnestly at the quaint old house and grounds which had attracted his attention. Edgar did not follow his example but sat unmoved, looking fixedly at the last narrow strip of orange light that separated night from day on the distant horizon.

"I feel as if I had come upon something uncanny," murmured Frank. "Look at that double row of poplars stretching away almost as far as we can see? Is it not an ideal Ghost's Walk, especially in this hour of falling shadows. I never saw anything so suggestive in a country landscape before. Each tree looks like a spectre hob-nobbing with its neighbor. Tell me that this is a haunted house which guards this avenue. Nothing less weird should dominate a spot so peculiar."

"Frank, I did not know you were so fanciful," exclaimed the other, lashing his horse with a stinging whip.

"Wait, wait! I am not fanciful, it is the place that is curious. If you were not in a hurry for your supper you would see it too. Come, give it a look. You may have[6] observed it a hundred times before, but by this light you must acknowledge that it looks like a place with a history. Come, now, don't it?"

[6]

Edgar drew in his horse for the second time and impatiently allowed his glance to follow in the direction indicated by his friend. What he saw has already been partially described. But details will not be amiss here, as the house and its surroundings were really unique, and bespoke an antiquity of which few 

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