“Stood vacant for ten years. Then this rich feller, Blair, bought it. I don’t know him; but he bought a weevilly biscuit, there. A bad house, it is—rotten bad!”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Men’s bones in the brick and women’s blood in the mortar.”
“Was the old boy a cannibal?” asked Kent, amused by the sea veteran’s heroics.
“Just as bad: slave-trader.”
“Have you ever been in the house?”
“Many’s the time, when it was Hogg’s Haven. Only once, since. They do tell that the curse has come down with the house and is heavy on the new owner’s son.”
“So I’ve heard.”
The old white head wagged bodingly. “The curse of the blood,” he said. “It’s on all that race.”
“But that wouldn’t affect the Blairs.”