The two young girls walked out of the lodge and found themselves in a thicket of stunted cedar trees, that, because they were higher than her head, prevented Gloria from beholding one of the most magnificent and stupendous landscapes in the country.
A few steps farther, however, brought them out upon the private road that led up to the house.
It was a road so utterly neglected that the thicket of cedars on each side nearly met in the middle, and would have prevented any other than a foot-passenger from passing along it.
This old road led upward all the way to a thickly-wooded knoll, on the summit of which, quite buried in pine and cedar trees, stood the old gray stone building with its heavy oaken doors and heavy oaken-shuttered windows. These were all wide open to the sun and air now.
“Were you here when your grandmother—I mean your auntie, left the house?” inquired Gloria, as they approached the stone portico leading to the door.
“No—oh, dear, no! I never lived here! I always wanted to, though!” replied the girl.
“Come and stay with me, then, for a while, for I should like very much to have you.”
“And oh, how I should like to come!”
“And you would not be afraid of the ghosts?”
“No! I don’t believe in them! I wish I could! I would rather see a ghost—if such a being exists—than anything else in the world! That is the reason why I want to live in this house—to watch and wait all day in lonesome rooms, and lay awake all night in hope of seeing a ghost. And if there is any particularly evil haunted room in the house—that is the one I wish to sleep in.”