building an importance which has spread its fame from one end of
the country to the other. I refer to the tragedy attending the
wedding lately celebrated there.

Veronica Moore, rich, pretty and wilful, had long cherished a
strange liking for this frowning old home of her ancestors, and,
at the most critical time of her life, conceived the idea of proving
to herself and to society at large that no real ban lay upon it save
in the imagination of the superstitious. So, being about to marry
the choice of her young heart, she caused this house to be opened
for the wedding ceremony; with what result, you know.

Though the occasion was a joyous one and accompanied by all that
could give cheer to such a function, it had not escaped the
old-time shadow. One of the guests straying into the room of
ancient and unhallowed memory, the one room which had not been
thrown open to the crowd, had been found within five minutes of
the ceremony lying on its dolorous hearthstone, dead; and though
the bride was spared a knowledge of the dreadful fact till the
holy words were said, a panic had seized the guests and emptied
the houses suddenly and completely as though the plague had been
discovered there.

This is why I hastened to follow Uncle David when he told me that
all was not right in this house of tragic memories.




II