and is still disfigured with strips of rotting fence and half covered
with brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil long unacquainted
with the plow. The house itself is in tolerably good condition,
though badly weather-stained and in dire need of attention from the
glazier, the smaller male population of the region having attested in
the manner of its kind its disapproval of dwelling without dwellers.
It is two stories in height, nearly square, its front pierced by a
single doorway flanked on each side by a window boarded up to the
very top. Corresponding windows above, not protected, serve to admit
light and rain to the rooms of the upper floor. Grass and weeds grow
pretty rankly all about, and a few shade trees, somewhat the worse
for wind, and leaning all in one direction, seem to be making a
concerted effort to run away. In short, as the Marshall town
humorist explained in the columns of the Advance, "the proposition
that the Manton house is badly haunted is the only logical conclusion
from the premises." The fact that in this dwelling Mr. Manton
thought it expedient one night some ten years ago to rise and cut the
throats of his wife and two small children, removing at once to
another part of the country, has no doubt done its share in directing
public attention to the fitness of the place for supernatural
phenomena.

To this house, one summer evening, came four men in a wagon. Three
of them promptly alighted, and the one who had been driving hitched
the team to the only remaining post of what had been a fence. The
fourth remained seated in the wagon. "Come," said one of his
companions, approaching him, while the others moved away in the
direction of the dwelling--"this is the place."

The man addressed did not move. "By God!" he said harshly, "this is