"
HOOD'S _Haunted House_.
One autumn evening, not very long ago, I was driving out with my uncle.
I had been spending several weeks at his house, and in that time had
driven with him very often, so that I supposed myself familiar with
nearly all the roads that stretched away from the pleasant village where
he resided; but on this occasion he proposed taking me in an entirely
new direction, over a tract of country I had never before seen.
For a mile or two after we left home, we bowled rapidly along on a
well-travelled turnpike; then a sudden turn to the right brought us,
with slackened speed, into a quiet country-road. Passing through the
fields that bordered the highway, we came into a wild, romantic region
of hill and dale that fully deserved all that my uncle had said in its
praise.
Giving ourselves up to the sweet influences of the scene, we trotted our
horses slowly, past dusky bits of forest that made the air fragrant with
the damp smell of the woods, and by occasional shining pools adorned
with floating pond-lilies, and shaded with thick, low bushes of
witch-hazel.
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