Within, on an old-fashioned hearth, blazed a glorious wood fire, which gave a rich coloring to the oak-panelled walls, and fell warmly on a group of young people seated and standing, chatting about the fire. At one side of it, in a chair of the Elizabethan period, sat the hostess, Molly Vance, only daughter of James Vance, Esq., and sister of “Adonis,” a beautiful girl of eighteen.
At the opposite side, leaning with folded arms against the high carved mantel, stood Aubrey Livingston; the beauty of his fair hair and blue eyes was never more marked as he stood there in the gleam of the fire and the soft candle light. He was talking vivaciously, his eyes turning from speaker to speaker, as he ran on, but resting chiefly with pride on his beautiful betrothed, Molly Vance.
The group was completed by two or three other men, among them Reuel Briggs, and three pretty girls. Suddenly a clock struck the hour.
“Only nine,” exclaimed Molly. “Good people, what shall we do to wile the tedium of waiting for the witching hour? Have any one of you enough wisdom to make a suggestion?”
“Music,” said Livingston.
“We don’t want anything so commonplace.”
“Blind Man’s Buff,” suggested “Adonis.”
“Oh! please not that, the men are so rough!”
“Let us,” broke in Cora Scott, “tell ghost stories.”
“Good, Cora! yes, yes, yes.”