Adopting an Abandoned Farm by Kate Sanborn
page 47 of 91 (51%)
page 47 of 91 (51%)
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"We fell asleep at daylight, and when I told Monk, the butler, he said it was a corpse, sure--a corpse whose legs had been tied to keep them straight and the cords had not been taken off, the feet not being loosened. Why my own dear mother, that's dead many a year (Heaven bless her departed spirit!)--she would never tell a word that was not true--she saw a ghost hopping in that way, tied-like, jumping around a bed--blue as a blue bag; just after the third day she was buried, and my mother (the Lord bless her soul!) told me the sons went to her grave and loosened the cords and she never came back any more. Isn't it awful? And, bedad, Miss, it's every word true. I can tell you of a young man I knew who looked into a window at midnight (after he had been playing cards, Miss, gambling with the other boys) and saw something awful strange, and was turned by ghosts into a shadow." This seemed to be a thrilling theme, such as Hawthorne would have been able to weave into the weirdest of weird tales, and I said, "Go on." "Well, he used to go playing cards about three miles from his home with a lot of young men, for his mother wouldn't have cards played in her house, and she thought it was wicked, and begged him not to play. It's a habit with the young men of Ireland--don't know as it's the same in other countries--and they play for a goose or a chicken. They go to some vacant house to get away from their fathers, they're so against it at home. Why, my brother-in-law used to go often to such a house on the side of a country road. Each man would in turn provide the candles to play by, and as this house was said to be haunted, bedad they had it all to themselves. Well, this last night that ever they played there--it was Tom's own brother that told me this--just as they were going to deal the cards, a tall gentleman came out from a room that had been the |
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