who had a very large family of little "Manassehs." She said that
there was a still larger family, some of them probably living
just under the spot where we sat, whose sirname was "Hokes." (If
either of us had been familiar with another word pronounced in
the same way, though spelled differently, I should since have
thought that she was all the time laughing in her sleeve at my
easy belief.) These "Hokeses" were not good-natured people, she
added, whispering to me that we must not speak about them aloud,
as they had sharp ears, and might overhear us, and do us
mischief.

I think she was hoaxing herself as well as me; it was her way of
being a heroine in her own eyes and mine, and she had always the
manner of being entirely in earnest.

But she became more and more romantic in her inventions. A
distant aristocratic-looking mansion, which we could see half-
hidden by trees, across the river, she assured me was a haunted
house, and that she had passed many a night there, seeing
unaccountable sights, and hearing mysterious sounds. She further
announced that she was to be married, some time, to a young man
who lived over there. I inferred that the marriage was to take
place whenever the ghostly tenants of the house would give their
consent. She revealed to me, under promise of strict secrecy, the
young man's name. It was "Alonzo."

Not long after I picked up a book which one of my sisters had
borrowed, called "Alonzo and Melissa," and I discovered that she
had been telling me page after page of "Melissa's" adventures, as
if they were her own. The fading memory I have of the book is