Myrtle Hazard had nearly reached the age of fourteen, and, though not
like to inherit much of the family property, was fast growing into a
large dower of hereditary beauty. Always handsome, her features shaped
themselves in a finer symmetry, her color grew richer, her figure
promised a perfect womanly development, and her movements had the grace
which high-breeding gives the daughter of a queen, and which Nature now
and then teaches the humblest of village maidens. She could not long
escape the notice of the lovers and flatterers of beauty, and the time of
danger was drawing near.

At this period of her life she made two discoveries which changed the
whole course of her thoughts, and opened for her a new world of ideas and
possibilities.

Ever since the dreadful event of November, 1854, the garret had been a
fearful place to think of, and still more to visit. The stories that the
house was haunted gained in frequency of repetition and detail of
circumstance. But Myrtle was bold and inquisitive, and explored its
recesses at such times as she could creep among them undisturbed. Hid
away close under the eaves she found an old trunk covered with dust and
cobwebs. The mice had gnawed through its leather hinges, and, as it had
been hastily stuffed full, the cover had risen, and two or three volumes
had fallen to the floor. This trunk held the papers and books which her
great-grandmother, the famous beauty, had left behind her, records of the
romantic days when she was the belle of the county,--storybooks, memoirs,
novels, and poems, and not a few love-letters,--a strange collection,
which, as so often happens with such deposits in old families, nobody had
cared to meddle with, and nobody had been willing to destroy, until at
last they had passed out of mind, and waited for a new generation to