Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/390

382 waters; for two persons had been drowned in it during the last hundred years: and the last one was the parson of the parish, returning from the squire's dinner in the normal condition of a guest,  1740-50. But what most affected the popular mind was, not the jovial soul hurried into eternity, but the material circumstance that the greedy pike had cleared the flesh off his bones in a single night, so that little more than a skeleton, with here and there a black rag hanging to it, had been recovered next morning.

This ghastly detail being stoutly maintained and constantly repeated by two ancient eye-witnesses, whose one melodramatic incident and treasure it was, the rustic mind saw no beauty whatever in those pellucid and delicious waters, where flowers did glass themselves.

As for the women of the village, they looked on this sheet of water as a trap for their poor bodies and those of their children, and spoke of it as a singular hardship in their lot, that Hernshaw Mere had not been filled up threescore years agone.

The castle itself was no castle, nor had it been for centuries. It was just a house with battlements; but attached to the stable was an old square tower, that really had formed part of the mediæval castle.

However, that unsubstantial shadow, a name, is often more durable than the thing, especially in rural parts; but, indeed, what is there in a name for Time's teeth to catch hold of?

Though no castle, it was a delightful abode. The drawing-room and dining-room had both spacious bay-windows, opening on to the lawn that sloped very gradually down to the pellucid lake, and there was mirrored. On this sweet lawn the inmates and guests walked for sun and mellow air, and often played bowls at eventide.

On the other side was the drive up to the house-door, and a sweep, or small oval plot, of turf, surrounded by gravel; and a gate at the corner of this sweep opened into a grove of the grandest old spruce-firs in the island.

This grove, dismal in winter and awful at night, was deliciously cool and sombre in the dog-days. The trees were spires; and their great stems stood serried like infantry in column, and flung a grand canopy of sombre plumes overhead. A strange, antique, and classic grove,—nulli penetrabilis astro.

This retreat was enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the east side came nearly to the house. A few laurel-bushes separated the two. At night it was shunned religiously, on account of the ghosts. Even by daylight it was little frequented, except by one person,—and she took to it amazingly. That person was Mrs. Gaunt. There seems to be, even in educated women, a singular, instinctive love of twilight; and here was twilight at high noon. The place, too, suited her dreamy, meditative nature. Hither, then, she often retired for peace and religious contemplation, and moved slowly in and out among the tall stems, or sat still, with her thoughtful brow leaned on her white hand,—till the cool, umbrageous retreat got to be called, among the servants, "The Dame's Haunt."

This, I think, is all needs be told about the mere place, where the Gaunts lived comfortably many years, and little dreamed of the strange events in store for them; little knew the passions that slumbered in their own bosoms, and, like other volcanoes, bided their time.