"Be it?" said Bubble, resignedly. "I want to know!"
"And now," said the young instructress, rising, and shaking out her crumpled frock, "that is enough for to-day, Bubble. We must be going home soon; but first, I want to take a peep at the lower part of the old mill, that you told me about yesterday. You have been in there, you say? And how did you get in?"
"I'll show ye!" cried Bubble, springing up with alacrity, and leading the way towards the mill. "I'll show ye the very place, Miss Hildy. 'Tain't easy to get in, and 'tain't no place for a lady, nohow; but I kin git in, jist like—like 'rithmetic!"
"Bravo, Bubble!" said Hilda, laughing merrily. "That is very well for a beginning. How long is it since the mill was used?" she asked, looking up at the frowning walls of rough, dark stone, covered with moss and lichens.
"Farmer Hartley's gran'f'ther was the last miller," replied Bubble Chirk. "My father used to say he could just remember him, standin' at the mill-door, all white with flour, an' rubbin' his hands and laughin', jes' the way Farmer does. He was a good miller, father said, an' made the mill pay well. But his eldest son, that kem after him, warn't no great shakes, an' he let the mill go to wrack and ruin, an' jes' stayed on the farm. An' then he died, an' Cap'n Hartley came (that's the farmer's father, ye know), an' he was kind o' crazy, and didn't care about the mill either, an' so there it stayed.
"This way, Miss Hildy!" added the boy, breaking off suddenly, and plunging into the tangled thicket of shrubs and brambles that hid the base of the mill. "Thar! ye see that hole? That's whar I get in. Wait till I clear away the briers a bit! Thar! now ye kin look in."
The "hole" was a square opening, a couple of feet from the ground, and large enough for a person of moderate size to creep through. Hildegarde stooped down and looked in. At first she saw nothing but utter blackness; but presently her eyes became accustomed to the place, and the feeble light which struggled in past her through the opening, revealed strange objects which rose here and there from the vast pit of darkness,—fragments of rusty iron, bent and twisted into unearthly shapes; broken beams, their jagged ends sticking out like stiffly pointing fingers; cranks, and bits of hanging chain; and on the side next the water, a huge wheel, rising apparently out of the bowels of the earth, since the lower part of it was invisible. A cold, damp air seemed to rise from the earth. Hilda shivered and drew back, looking rather pale. "What a dreadful place!" she cried. "It looks like a dungeon of the Inquisition. I think you were very brave to go in there, Bubble. I am sure I should not dare to go; it looks so spectral and frightful."
"Hy Peters stumped me to go," said Bubble, simply, "so o' course I went. Most of the boys dassent. And it ain't bad, after the fust time. They do say it's haunted; but I ain't never seed nothin'."
"Haunted!" cried Hilda, drawing back still farther from the black opening. "By—by what, Bubble?"
"Cap'n's ghost!" replied the boy. "He used to go rooklin' round in there when he was alive, folks say, and some thinks his sperit haunts there now."