THE LATE MRS NULL

BY

FRANK R. STOCKTON

1886




CHAPTER I.


There was a wide entrance gate to the old family mansion of Midbranch,
but it was never opened to admit the family or visitors; although
occasionally a load of wood, drawn by two horses and two mules, came
between its tall chestnut posts, and was taken by a roundabout way among
the trees to a spot at the back of the house, where the chips of several
generations of sturdy wood-choppers had formed a ligneous soil deeper
than the arable surface of any portion of the nine hundred and fifty
acres which formed the farm of Midbranch. This seldom opened gate was in
a corner of the lawn, and the driving of carriages, or the riding of
horses through it to the porch at the front of the house would have been
the ruin of the short, thick grass which had covered that lawn, it was
generally believed, ever since Virginia became a State.

But there had to be some way for people who came in carriages or on
horseback to get into the house, and therefore the fence at the bottom
of the lawn, at a point directly in front of the porch, was crossed by a