The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1915-08-02
The Euening Story
Audrey's Ghost.
(By Anne Manning.)

Dora Petty, cant you come and stay
with mother for a week? l want to
go to Pennington for a visit and sim
ply will not leave her in that dismal
house all alone, for Sukey is worse
than no one at all, with her 'sperret
rappings and her firm belief that
| Pine Cottage is haunted. Come, like
the angel you are, and bring your
music so that you can exercise any
| spirits that might be at large. Let me
know when you can come and earn the
eternal gratitude of your bored-to-
death Dora
So Audrey smiled and packed a little
trunk, not forgetting her music, and
took an early train for Quemiss, the
quaint Long Island village where her
widowed aunt and cousin lived.
Pine cottage was a low, red house
set back on a grove of gloomy pines
that struggled out to a little inlet.
Mrs. Petty and Dora had tried with
out success to make the place cheer
| full. There was a garden with many
gay flowers. but no matter how many
pines were sacrificed there was ever
a feeling of chill dependency over
garden and cottage.
How. can there be shadows where
| there are no trees to cast them? %
protested Audrey the next morning as
she walked in the garden with her
aunt. Il don't see any shadows, Aunt
Ella; it is lovely
Mrs Petty spread out her palms
You have not been here long
enough, dear" she said gently. You
have not lived with the tradition of
since Uncle Potiphar died. Time and
again have wished that he had
never left the place to me, though.
! goodness knows, / needed it sadly
enough, for l was penniless at the
time
ut ought to make you a lovely
home, Aunt Ella said Audrey, her
lovely face warm with sympathy.
Don't you think the idea of the place
being haunted has created shadow
an imaginary shadow"
! Perhaps admitted the elder
woman moodily. IF any one could
| you with your sunshiny nature. But
you have never seen the ghost of Pine
| Cottage
| mo, but should like to-" declared
Audrey. 'Pll confess to great and
solemn liking for ghosts of all sorts.
Do tell me the story. Dora merely
shivers and turns pale when ask her
about it and you never will say right
out what it is that haunts Pine Cot
tage."
Mrs Petty sat down on a stone
bench in the sunniest part of the gar
den. Audrey dropped down on the
grass at ner aunJS IoeI anu CuppCu
her round chin in her palms.
''Unc1e Potiphar had a great uncle
BENJAMIN, who in his youth was a
very studious young man. Instead OF
engaging in the pleasures and pas
times of his own age he was always
sitting in some retired spot with his
nose in a book. They say that he
was a singularly handsome and
| charming young man when he chose
to make himself agreeable, which he
| seldom took the trouble to do
$50 Uncle Benjamin's youth passed
| without love and when he was forty
five years old he lived all alone in this
| cottage. Here he studied and wrote
his famous treatises for he became a
very learned man, but he never ap-
peared to be quite happy.
"Then one day he fell in love fer the
first time. Strange to say, he chose
a young girl of the neighborhood, a
farmers daughter. whose tastes were
uniformed and who had nothing much
to recommend her except a sweet SIM
| plicity of nature and a lovely face. The
girl was flattered by the attentions OF
DR.. Ben, as he was called and in time
| she promised to marry. him. Her par
ents were delighted with the match
and Benjamin's relatives were GLAD
| that he was to end his solitary mode
| of living.
"Pine Cottage was refurnished from
top to bottom by the middle aged lover
whose infatuation for his sweetheart
| ways appeared blind and deaf tc
women. 1t was arranged that the
wedding was to take place in the new
ly furnished cottage.
1.-The day before the wedding the
girl, Stella Smith, eloped with young
farmer of the neighborhood and was
married to him the day and hour she
was to have welded. Benjamin. She
left a note for the Tilted bridegroom
saying that she could never marry g
man so much older than herself; thai
| she could not love him.
THAT night Benjamin drowned
himself in the inlet. Before he went
out on that fatal errand he cursed the
little cottage which he had prepared
for his bride and he vowed that his
spirit should haunt it until the day
when a young girl should love an old
| man and marry him in Pine Cottage
There you have the story"
What a sad story, Aunt Ella said
! Audrey soberly- But has any one
ever seen Benjamin's ghost?''
Mrs. Petty hesitated-
I'VE have never heard or seen any
sounds in the house, but we have felt
the oppression of a shadow that we
! could not see-if you can understand
that. Then, Dora claims that for sew
eral weeks at intervals, she has seen
| a tall, white figure stalking among the
pines at the inlet Her window looks
that way and occasionally she has
I9Iimrssed this apparftiou Once she