The Haunted Homestead Part 35

"We'll see about that!" said our grandmother. "But come! all seems quiet now; we will go to bed, and investigate further to-morrow."

"Yes, ole mist'ess, honey, I knows all is quiet jest now, but----"

"Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!--Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho!" burst a peal of demoniac laughter, resounding through and through the room, and close into our ears.

"The Lord between us and Satan!" cried Ca.s.sy, dropping the candle, which immediately went out and left us in darkness.

While, peal on peal, sounded the demoniac laughter around us.

Ca.s.sy fell on her knees and began praying:

"St. Mary, pray for us! St. Martha pray for us! all ye hooly vargins and widders, pray for us lone women! St. Peter, pray for us! St. Powl pray for us! All hooly 'postles and 'vangellers, pray for us poor sinners!--Saint--Saint--Saint--oh! for de Lor's sake, Miss Ally, honey, tell me de name o' that hooly saint as met a ghose riding on Balaam's a.s.s and knows hows--how it feels!"

"It was Saul or Samuel, or the Witch of Endor, I forget which," said Alice, whose knowledge of the Old Testament, never very precise, was frightened out of her.

"St. Saul, St. Samuel, St. Witchywinder, pray for us, as met a ghost yourself and knows how it feels."

And still, while Ca.s.sy prayed her frantic prayers, and poor old Hector told his beads, and Alice trembled and clung to me, the demon laughter resounded around and around us. We were in such total darkness that I had not seen Mrs. Hawkins withdraw herself from the group, nor suspected her absence until we heard her firm, cheery voice outside near the dining-room door, saying:

"What can any one think of this? Come here, Hector! Come here, children!"

We all went--expecting some _denouement_.

Mrs. Hawkins telegraphed to us to be perfectly silent, and to step lightly. She turned the angle of the house and walked up the blind alley between the back of the house and the back of the kitchen; when she had got about midway of the walk, she stopped, and silently pointed to the rank weeds and bushes that grew closely under the wall of the house.

"There! what do you think of that?" she said, in a low voice.

We looked, and at first could see nothing; but, on a closer inspection, we perceived a very faint glimmer, a mere thread of red light, low down among the bushes.

We looked up at Mrs. Hawkins for explanation.

"After the candle fell and went out," she said, "I slipped out, with the intention of exploring again, and this time alone, and in darkness. I came up this blind alley, and, looking sharply, descried that glimmer of light. And now I am convinced that the revelers, human or ghostly, are below there, in that old, disused cellar that we were made to believe was nearly full of water, and required to be drained. Don't be agitated, children! take it coolly," concluded Mrs. Hawkins, stooping down to put aside the weeds and bushes.

Just at this moment another detonating roll of the ball, and scattering fall of the pins, and peal of hollow laughter, resounded from below.

Urr-rr-rr-r-r-r-rattle bang-ang-ang! "Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho!

ho! A dead shot!"

"Too late, young gentlemen! Your fun is all over! Your game is up! You are discovered! Come forth!" said Mrs. Hawkins, who, down upon her knees, pulled away the bushes, turned up the old, broken and mouldy cellar door, and discovered the scene below.

A rudely fitted-up bowling alley, occupying the further end of the room, and some eight or ten youths, no longer engaged in rolling b.a.l.l.s, but, on the contrary, standing in various att.i.tudes of detected culpability.

"Come! come forth!" commanded Mrs. Hawkins.

And they came, climbing up the rotten and moldering steps, and the very first who put his impudent head up through the door into the open air was Will Rackaway!

"Oh! Will," exclaimed Alice, reproachfully.

"You! Will?" questioned Mrs. Hawkins, in scandalized astonishment.

"No! the ghost of O'Donnegan," replied the youth, in a sepulchral voice.

"Reprobate!" exclaimed our grandmother.

"Now, indeed, indeed, I was only taking the liberty of entertaining my friends in my kind Aunt Hawkins' cellar. Quite right, you know! Only don't tell father, and I'll never do so no more!" pleaded Will, with mock humility.

"Dismiss your comrades, sir! and come into the house! I shall send for your father to-morrow morning," said Mrs. Hawkins, in a stern voice.

There was no need to dismiss the intruders; they were climbing up the dilapidated steps as fast as they could come, and slinking away with averted heads, trying to conceal their faces, which Mrs. Hawkins did not insist upon discovering. When they were all gone, Will followed us into the house.

"Now, then, sir, explain your conduct," ordered Mrs. Hawkins.

And Will, with an air of mock humility and deprecation, obeyed.

The account he gave was briefly this: Himself and several other youths, sons of very strict parents, who proscribed ninepins with other games, had, out of some old timber and furniture left of O'Donnegan's old ninepin alley, that had been taken down and carried away, fitted up the old, disused cellar for their games. They had played there recently every night, with no other intention than that of amusing themselves, and of keeping their game concealed--with no thought of enacting a ghostly drama, until, to their astonishment, they gradually learned that these revels were mistaken for ghostly orgies, and had given the house its unenviable reputation of being haunted--a joke much too good for human nature, and especially for boys' human nature, not to carry out.

Everything favored their concealment. The cellar was reputed to be half full of water, and was long disused, and every cellar window, except the narrow, hidden one that they had turned into a door, was nailed up.

Besides, the front division of the cellar was really two feet deep in water, and when there was any great risk of discovery they had a means of letting it in to overflow the back division, so that their fixtures were all covered. Thus for months they had played the double game of ninepins and of a ghostly drama!

Need I say more? Will was let off with a lengthy lecture, which I have reason to believe did him a vast deal of good, as he is now the staid father of a family, and pastor of a church. Mrs. Hawkins was for the next nine days the wonder of the neighborhood for having so valiantly exorcised the ghosts. And we settled down in perfect content in the fine old house, to which we possessed the double right of rental and of conquest.

THE END.

THE GILBERTS;

OR,

RICE CORNER NUMBER TWO.

CHAPTER I.

THE GILBERTS.

The spring following Carrie Howard's death Rice Corner was thrown into a commotion by the astounding fact that Captain Howard was going out West, and had sold his farm to a gentleman from the city, whose wife "kept six servants, wore silk all the time, never went inside of the kitchen, never saw a churn, breakfasted at ten, dined at three, and had supper the next day!"

Such was the story which Mercy Jenkins detailed to us early one Monday morning, and then, eager to communicate so desirable a piece of news to others of her acquaintance, she started off, stopping for a moment as she pa.s.sed the wash-room to see if Sally's clothes "wan't kinder dingy and yaller." As soon as she was gone the astonishment of our household broke forth, grandma wondering why Captain Howard wanted to go to the ends of the earth, as she designated Chicago, their place of destination, and what she should do without Aunt Eunice, who, having been born on grandma's wedding-day, was very dear to her, and then her age was so easy to keep. But the best of friends must part, and when at Mrs. Howard's last tea-drinking with us I saw how badly they all felt, and how many tears were shed, I firmly resolved never to like anybody but my own folks, unless, indeed, I made an exception in favor of Tom Jenkins, who so often drew me to school on his sled, and who made such comical looking jack-o'-lanterns out of the big yellow pumpkins.

In reply to the numerous questions concerning Mr. Gilbert, the purchaser of their farm, Mrs. Howard could only reply that he was very wealthy and had got tired of living in the city; adding, further, that he wore a "monstrous pair of musquitoes," had an evil-looking eye, four children, smoked cigars, and was a lawyer by profession. This last was all grandma wanted to know about him--"that told the whole story," for there never was but _one_ decent lawyer, and that was Mr. Evelyn, Cousin Emma's husband. Dear old lady! when a few years ago, she heard that I, her favorite grandchild, was to marry one of the craft, she made another exception in his favor, saying that "if he wasn't all straight, Mary would soon make him so!"

Within a short time after Aunt Eunice's visit she left Rice Corner, and on the same day wagon-load after wagon-load of Mr. Gilbert's furniture pa.s.sed our house, until Sally declared "there was enough to keep a tavern, and she didn't see nothin' where theys' goin' to put it," at the same time announcing her intention of "running down there after dinner, to see what was going on."

It will be remembered that Sally was now a married woman--"Mrs. Michael Welsh;" consequently, mother, who lived with her, instead of her living with mother, did not presume to interfere with her much, though she hinted pretty strongly that she "always liked to see people mind their own affairs." But Sally was incorrigible. The dinner dishes were washed with a whew, I was coaxed into sweeping the back room--which I did, leaving the dirt under the broom behind the door--while Mrs. Welsh, donning a pink calico, blue shawl, and bonnet trimmed with dark green, started off on her prying excursion, stopping by the roadside where Mike was making fence, and keeping him, as grandma said, "full half an hour by the clock from his work."