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And now, set in a circle of cleared land and ringed by the ancient forests of the north, I saw the gray, weather-beaten walls of the house The laere overgrown; the great well-sweep shattered; the locust-trees covered with grapevines--the cherry- and apple-trees to the south broken and neglected Weeds sardens, where here and there a dull-red poppy peered at les; lilac and locust had already shed foliage too early blighted, but the huge and forbidding maples were all aflame in their blood-red autuun to die; in the clear air a faint whiff of decay ca heaps of leaves--decay, ruin, and the taint of death; and, in the sad autu secret and sly--son of my Oneida, I walked my horse across the lawn and up to the desolate ros The shutters had been ripped off their hinges; all within was bare and dark; dimly I made out the shadoalls of a hallhich divided the house into halves By the light which filtered through the soiled s I examined room after room from the outside, then, noiselessly, tried the door, but found it bolted from within as well as locked from without Either the Butlers or the coh ato do this I prowled on, looking for thethey had used as exit, exanance The clapboards were a foot wide, evidently fashioned with care and beaded on the edges The outside doors all opened outward; and I noted, with a shudder of contempt, the "witch's half-moon," or lunette, in the bottom of each door, which betrays the cowardly superstition of the man who lived there Such cat-holes are fashioned for haunted houses; the specter is believed to crawl out through these openings, and then to be kept out with a tarred rag stuffed into the hole--ghosts being unable to endure tar Faugh! If specters walk, the accursed house hosts of the victi red from Cherry Valley--children with throats cut; woh and through--and perhaps the awful specter of Lieutenant Boyd, with eyes and nails plucked out, and tongue cut off, bound to the stake and slowly roasting to death, while Walter Butler watched the agony curiously, interested and surprised to see a diseht well be phanto to do with me; only the absentat last theI sought for, I shoved it open and cli upon the floor inside,no more sound than the padded toes of a tree-cat