“I visited the Vanloo’s when they dwelt here—where is the heir to this property?”
“I do not know, sir; but the agent gave us permission to occupy one wing of it to care for the place.”
“He might well do so, for money would buy no one else to live here after the tragedies this old mansion has seen.
“You and your mother are brave, indeed, to dwell here; but good-night,” and the good physician entered his carriage and drove rapidly away from the old mansion, which had become known as “Spook Hall,” for the superstitious country folk and the coast dwellers vowed that the place was haunted—and certainly it was by cruel memories of red deeds done there one stormy night years before.
CHAPTER V.
A BOLD RESOLVE.
It was several weeks after the attack on Mark Merrill, on his visit to the town of B—— after the doctor, and Mrs. Merrill had regained her health, old Peggy had returned to her duties, and the young sailor lad was thus able to resume his fishing and carrying the mail each week to and from several little hamlets on the coast.
By the sale of his fish and the mail carrying, both most dangerous work in rough weather, the lad made a fair living for his mother, old Peggy, and himself, the only three dwellers in the once grand old mansion of Cliff Castle, then the wonder and admiration of the country folk, but for years left deserted and crumbling to decay, its hundreds of surrounding acres allowed to grow up with weeds and undergrowth.
The furniture all had been left after the fateful tragedy beneath its roof, which had gained for it the name of Spook Hall, and the place had been shunned as a pestilence, until the moving into one wing of the Merrills, who had set at defiance the weird stories of the old mansion.
There was an unsolved mystery hanging over the Merrills, for no one seemed to know who they were, or from whence they had come.