The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1868-07-12

Shall angel lips reply.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
On the wide, sandy plain that
stretches its weary monotony. be-
tween the crowded manufacturing
villages of Chicopee River and the
quiet villages Of CRANKY and South
Hadley, stands a lonely house, ten
rods from a lonely road. Tits of two
stories and an, L, though the single
room in this last is the only room
that is inhabitable. The two-story
part, now q ruin, has never been
more than O mere shell. A quarter
of q century ago, Shubael Jones put
it up, planted little orchard around
it, and brought to it a black-eyed,
high,tempered wife. But he was at
that time an incipient drunkard, and
soon every appearance of comfort
and domestic happiness fed the
place. And one dismal November
night, the wretcked wife summoned
her neighbors from their beds to
where the poor sot lay dead at the
foot of the cellar stairs. No inquest
was held; none doubted that he was
killed by fall in a drunken fit, in
attempting another visit to his cider
barrel. t
The widow rented the place to a
tenant who neither kept it well nor
paid its rent. She went with her
little boy, who was not quite an
idiot, to work in a paper mill at the
village then called "Shipmuck.
Fora long years she changed from
factory to factory, as best she could
keep her son employed. He was
always harmless and still. He was
always obedient when under his
mothers eye and working at her
side. They earned more than they
spent, but the prudent people of
Ludlow, where they last lived, feared
to allow them to ''gain q settlement"
and thus render their town liable for
their future support. So they OBJ
tanned the consent of the agent that
the widow and her son need not keep
strict time, and offered to furnish O
room in her old desolated house,
three miles from the factory, if they
would live there. The proud wo-
man understood the motive, and
with q flash of her dark eyes, declined
their kindness. But she soon bought
little furniture of family that was
moving away, and re-established her.
self in the gloomy old wreck.
It was now late in the fall, when
the widow Jones first noticed that
the grass was disappearing from the
roadside by the bars opposite her
door. 1t soon grew obviously worse;
sand though bald spot on mans
head is no great wonder, this bare
spot, with no hoof-marks on it,
.bafied all her ingenuity. The fence,
too, seemed worn, as if by loungers
Leaning upon it. What could it
mean? No human gathering could
have been held in that lonely place
since the day when the mouldering
frame was raised, except on that
sad day when the mouldering frame
of the owner went to its long home.
The explanation of that mystery
involves US in a deeper one. One
night in September, man from
Ludlow was passing the house just
dlter GHe laCCOry Deli uau announced
the hour of 8. AS he neared the
house, he heard a groan. 1t was
single groan, and then all was still.
But it was such groan as no one
utters twice, and he who hears it
never wishes to hear it again. He
felt 1t his duty to rush into the
house, but dared not. After long
hesitation, he went his way, speculat-
ing whether the widow had murder
ed her idiot son Or had been murder
ed by him; and when he saw them
both come quietly into the village
the next morning, he doubted first
his eyes and next his memory.
But the same errand again brought
him past that lonely house q few
nights later. Again he heard the 8
o'clock bell as he approached the
house, and again, as he was opposite
the house, that dreadful groan. The
next night, ne walked out with a
neighbor, SO timing his steps that
when near the house both heard the