The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1870-10-06
GALES, ghtttBes, 5net0otes, 6t.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

1t was about the year 1920 that two
yonug married people took house in
O., a sea-shore town. The house
was an old-fashioned one, but had been
well built, and was in perfect condition.
1t was pretty house, built in the irregu-
lar style of the day, of some fifty or more
years back. A hall ran through the
house from the middle of which sprang a
broad flight of stairs. Half way up the
stairs there was generous landing place,
with large arched window This hall
and stairway were the only regular parts
of the mansion-rooms and wings having
been built from time TO time.
The place was chosen by Mr. and Mrs.
ADstruther, because it was retired, bit
lonely, and with nice woods about it-a
little gloomy, to be sure, TO those not in
their honeymoon.
On a very sultry July night the pair
stopped on their way up the old stairway,
on the landing, and looked long out of the
great window, for the landscape beneath
them, either by the bright light of the
moon, or the lesser brightness of the stars,
was very. fair. They lad been talking
very earnestly, when Mrs Anstrnther
suddenly broke off from what she was
saying, and exclaimed: .-.'-
'tGeorge, dear, what change there
was in the air moment since, | felt an
icy, damp breath over my cheek"
s'My dear child, he said, ''the night
is hot as the Internal regions. What an
imagination you have :"
''WeIl, she said, ''perhaps am inn
aginative, but thought felt a shivcring
breeze over my face; but it's gone now"
Mrs. Anstruther thought no more of The
circumstance, if indeed, circumstance it
could be called. She and her husband
had passed very happy days at the grove,
But presently there was trouble among
the servants for even lovers have such
membranes. The cook said her kitchen
was her castle, and that she did not want
any one TO be looking after her pans and
place at night, but found them much dis
arranged in the morning, often upon the
hearth ;aahd she said if Mr.. and Mrs
Anstruther liked twelve O'clock supper
she would willingly stay up to cook it for
them. The laundress said her clothes
horse, with the freshly. ironed linen left TO
air over night, was quite oYerset in the
morning, that the mistress, sure, was
young and very frolicksome, indeed qui te
like a miss, but she thought it was hard
on poor servant to be letting off her
jokes upon her and giving her double
work - and so from time to time did the
young mistress apparently derange her
nendge. as iT ig
One morning the cook came to Mrs.
Anstruther and said she thought, perhaps,
she had found out who put the kitchen
and laundry, in such a plight, and she
begged her mistress pardon for having
thought she had played tricks upon her
maids. She then described her having
gone down to, the kitchen, one Monday
morning at dawn, and there saw, in the
Feeble light, the figure of woman, her
head covered by a sun bonnet, crouching
before the kitchen fire. Upon her en-
trance the woman misteriousIy disappear
ed.1 Snow, ma'am," she said, ''perhaps
it is some poor crazy creature who gets In
somehow, and oyersets my pans and
Bridget's clean clothes, but sure / do not
see how any one buta ghost could get in,
for the house be locked up SO close like
l think she was trying to warm herself,
ma'am, and how ever she got out ma am,
l cannot tell, only she was gone in an
instant, and not a door opened"
Poor Mrs. Anstruther left quite dis
turbed at the cooks relation, and told her
husband of it Immediately OF course,
he only laughed at it, said Polly must