First, in the opening of the fall term of the Blackville Academy for young gentlemen, lawyer Closeby came to Black Hall, armed with the authority of Mr. Lyon Berners, and straightway took little Cromartie, now a lad of seven years of age, out of the hands of Miss Tabby, and placed him in those of Dr. and Mrs. Smith, dominie and matron of the academy, for education.
Miss Tabby mourned over the partial loss of her favorite, but was consoled on the very next Hallow Eve, when a beautiful babe was left at her door.
And now that years have passed, we approach the time when the great Hallow Eve Mystery was destined to be a mystery no longer.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE GUARDIANS OF THE OLD HOUSE.
| On every lip a speechless horror hung, |
| On every brow the burden of affliction; |
| The old ancestral spirits knew and felt |
| The house's malediction.—Thomas Hood. |
Time does but deepen the gloom that hangs over an old mansion where a heinous crime has been committed, an awful tragedy enacted.
As the years darkened over the old Black Hall, the house fell to be regarded as a place haunted and accursed.
But as there is a certain weird attraction in the horrible, the old Black Hall came to be the greatest object of morbid interest in the neighborhood, greater even than the magnificent caverns, or the miraculous springs.