The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1906-12-07


grandfather had. made me his con-
slant companion. He was AN, timer
ant preacher of western England-his
circuit calling him from walled Ches-
ter on the west to the novels of the
charcoal burners in m1d-England;
and during the years of his itinerancy
/ followed him in the pursuance OF
his duties through sun and rain and
winter gale. /,
repeat this in order to explain
just how I regarded my grandfather
in the light of certain hereditament
he left to me, his diary, but which
he expressly forbade me opening
until I had passed my twenty~t1fth
birthday.
There were many things I witnessed
and heard in my boyhood for which
I could find no explanation until I
broke the seal of this book wherein
the magnitude of my grandfather's
very soul stands revealed. The first
entry in the diary is as follows:
My beloved grandson, in this
diary are recorded events writ down
for thy especial edification. Without
comment leave it with thee to judge
whether I have been the victim OF
terrible mind disorder, or whether
am gifted with perceptions beyond
the usual ken of man.
It was in the first years of my
study of the occult, long before thou
hadst come to gladden. thy grand
sires heart, that was journeying to
Blore Health. When night came down
fate led me to the door of desolate
inn slowly dropping to ruin in the
perpetual shadow of grove of oak.
The aged host greeted me most
cordially, for at his inn guests were
not frequent and therefore the more
welcome. In the parlor back of the
denuded bar l found his old wife and
his daughter, the only other persons
about the place, moving silently here
and there preparing the evening meal.
The daughter was young and tall and
straight and strong and her hands
were coarsened with outdoor work
for, it appeared, she was now the
burden-bearer of the family.
After the supper was cleared away,
the aged parents entertained me with
"reminiscences of past glory, of
when the inn was new and the great
tide of travel used to pass its door.
Then in saddened tones they told of
how the opening of new thorough
fare had diverted custom to other hos
telries. So when the daughter was
married to well-to-do young farmer
they closed the inn, perforce, and
went and made their home with her.
But one Inflated day the newly
welded husband rode away to
neighboring market town and never
returned.
After due time the farm and tene-
ments passed into the possession of
the next heir-at-law, cousin of the
husband; and the old couple with
their dowerless daughter returned to
the deserted inn, now racked and
wrecked with storm and long neglect.
"Thou canst see the gables of the
farm over yon above the trees" said
the mother, "and we might be living
there now mid comfort and plenty If
Lisbeth would only hearken to us and
wed with Carver ballard, the cousin
who succeeded to the estate.
Then Lisbeth, lifting her sorrow
laden eyes to portrait of her hus-
band on the wall, said: Mother,
thou need'st not grieve for the rich
living at the farm beyond Whitsun-
tide. That day promise to give my
hand to Carver Hal1ard an he still de-
sires it."
Then gloomy silence fell like a
funeral pail over US, and we sat about
the fire absorbed in our own thoughts
until there came the sound of a quick
step up the pathway and an i'm.
operative knock at the door, and Gar
yer ballard entered. He was a dark,
manufactured, harsh-spoken man
whom any tender young woman might
well have stunned.
could not understand it. then but
I intuitively felt that he was a man
with a guilty conscience And in the
light of the recent narration, fell
to comparing his features with those
OF the picture hanging above his head.
AS my gaze wandered from one to
the other there came TO me a sense of
presence, in the room, conviction I
could neither define nor evade: and
while I strove' to analyze critically
this impression a strange metamor-
phOsis seemed to come over my senses
and 1 felt myself drifting, as it were.
into a state of double consciousness.
Still with that sense of a divided
ego, with the voices about me echoine
vaguely through my brain, I thought
myself riding along a country road,
sunken and SCARED deep with old
cart ruts, a road had never Travelled
before. Under the influence of this
unseen force, appeared to come to
where the crumbling shell of an an.
Client oak spanned the path. reached
into the hollow trunk and drew forth
a spade corroded with rust. and roll
ing the log away began to dig into
the damp, soft, earth. In my trance
continued to. throw the dirt to the