"That
was where the young heir was killed by his father," said the squire;
"his blood fell down here--he was stabbed in the back--and he stumbled
a pace or two and fell; we can't scrub it out or dry it out." "I
suppose you are haunted?" I said. He laughed. "Well,-it is a great
convenience," he said. "I only live here in the summer; I have a little
house which is more convenient in the winter, a little distance away. I
can never get a caretaker here for the winter--but, bless you, if I
left every door and window open, there is not a soul in the place that
would come near it!" He led me through ranges of rooms panelled,
recessed, orieled--there were staircases, turret-chambers, galleries in
every direction. I think there must have been nearly fifty rooms in the
house, perhaps half-a-dozen of them inhabited. At one place he bade me
look out of a little window, and I saw below a small court with an
ancient chapel on the left, the windows bricked up. It had a sinister
and wicked air, somehow. The squire told me that they had unearthed a
dozen skeletons in that little yard as they were laying a drain, and
had buried them in the neighbouring churchyard. But the back of the
house was still more ravishing than the front; surrounded by great
brick walls, curving outwards, lay a grassy garden, with huge box-trees
at the sides, and in the centre many ancient apple-trees in full bloom.
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