out its blurred panes, as out of eyes tired with looking in vain for the old forms that darkened them so many years ago, and that will never come back.

I have passed this house in the darkness of the night, and it seemed to me as if its dwellers in Provincial days must be there in spirit, if not in body. It was an uncanny thought, yet I doubt if I should have been much startled had I seen the flickering candle-flames reflecting their dim light upon the windows that looked out upon the highway. I have no difficulty in re-peopling these old houses. I think their inmates must have been like other people, less selfish, perhaps, more quaint in speech and manner; but men and women like ourselves, with likes and dislikes, and with secrets, may be.

The romances of these old houses which one encounters in one place and

are buried romances; but these places held many a simple life and knew many a grand deed which has never been written except upon the hearts of those who knew their dwellers, or in the Great Book. One feels a touch of pity at the sight of their windows looking outward with a dull, vacant stare of half-conscious apathy at the world's desertion. At other times there seems to be just a hint of suspicion lingering about them, as if it were hardly the thing to be left with only a pair of ragged Lombardy poplars to tell the story of one's decayed gentility; and again there are traces of the old importance in the flashing panes of some ancient, two-story, hip-roofed mansion hedged about with the gnarled appletrees that knew the old house in its younger days, and knew the young life going in and out over its century-old threshold. These old houses have big,

warm hearts for those who know them best, and a life of comfort for the dwellers in them.

This house in particular has been a remarkable one in its day. Its superior architecture was the badge of an oldtime aristocracy that placed it far above the plebeian dwellings that in after years grew up with in sight of its one red chimney. Singular to record, the hearth fires of these plebeian dwellings still have a cheery welcome for the comer, while the hearth of this deserted aristocrat is cold and fireless and stark, and forever forsaken. All attempts to keep up appearances are laid aside; even the front-yard fence, for I know there must have been in those prim Puritan days something of that sort which the house drew about itself to keep the common herd away from its privacy, is simply indicated by the huge elms a-row that overshadow its front

Stairway in Tate House.

The Means Sideboard.

windows, growing in the side of the highway that has for so many years led past its worn but footless threshold. The gray shingles on the roof are thin from years of exposure, and curled and split and twisted into forlorn shape, laying bare the roof boards and making many a bad leak and flooded ceiling when the rains come. I noticed on the door of the front entrance the old brass knocker, which had the semblance of iron, so black was it from want of use and scouring. I wondered how long ago it was last used to warn the house of a ceremonious caller, or of the coming of some stranger who wished for its hospitality. Once within its narrow doorway, a strange feeling stole over me as my footsteps resounded through the vacant rooms, while the stairs leading to the chambers creaked with such noisy answer to my passage over them, that it seemed as if my intrusion upon the long silence were resented by some indignant spirit. There was a strange smell of dampness and sense of uninhabitableness about the place that made these impressions all the more vivid; yet it gave me a certain pleasure to imagine myself not alone, but attended and entertained by

my unseen host, who must in some way have had his eye upon the property all these years, that it should have been so well preserved. There was a big pile of straw in one of the chambers, and this was the only sign of humanity about the place, unless the one or two charred sticks of firewood that I had seen upon

must have been at one time, furnished with oddly patterned furniture, no doubt brought from old England with much trouble and expense ! If the furnishings of this room were in accordance with the simple elegance the carpenters gave it, it must have been a luxurious apartment, with the antique brass dogs to hold the blazing fire on the hearth, a half dozen tallow dips held bravely up in as many brass candlesticks, all polished to their brightest, and the customary mug of flip warming upon the ruddy coals, with a bit of grated cinnamon sprinkled on the top to give it a foreign flavor. The round brass-mounted, brightlypolished mahogany table, drawn into the centre of the room, on either side of which were old man Tate and his equally ancient dame, completed the picture.

quent and open outbreaks, until the domestic downfall culminated in crime; a picture of real life not so rare but that it may be seen in replica in almost any community, even in these days.

The crackle of the fire, the questioning purr of the house cat, and the sizzle of the hot tea-kettle depending from the black crane make the music of this fireside, and its company as well, unless some belated traveller has come in to warm himself in the blaze or to inquire the way to Broad's tavern, which was, in fact, just over the hill, but which on a dark night might as well have been a league away, for the matter of one's seeing its fire-lighted windows from the highway at this point. There was not much to think of in the way of personal history in the builder of this great house or of

to-day a tangle of briars, or should be according to the eternal fitness of things, and thence get a view of the little outhouse only a few feet away, where the tragedy occurred, and which has come to be a place to be avoided after nightfall, innocent enough-looking as it is by day. The little shed has a peculiar fascination for me, and I gape at it as if to conjure up the picture painted by one of those old neighborhood cronies, who delighted especially in treasuring up all the ghostly happenings that have fallen upon his ear for almost a century. While I was listening, he would not have been flattered had he known that I was likening him to the subject of his story, and making him the perpetrator of one of the most dastardly crimes ever committed hereabouts; but this cruel comparison was most unjust.

my

It is cold and damp, these first days of May, and I go up to the straw-pile in the chamber for a handful of straw with which to light a fire. I try to start the charred wood in the kitchen fireplace into a feeble blaze, for company's sake; but only a thick smoke answers effort, which hangs about the entrance to the dusky flue as if it were uncertain whether or not it ought to go up the big chimney or come down into the room. Whether it goes the one way or the other I can hardly tell, I am so soon lost in one vagary and another. In this, as in all patrician households of the time, there were huge hampers of groceries, brought across the ocean, that were on extra occasions to be drawn on and enjoyed, hoarded with other of the Tate supplies." With the Tates as with the others, whose luxuries had been brought from over the water, those which the admiral, their son, had brought were treasured in high degree. They were deposited in this selfsame outhouse, which might have been a safer depository in those days than now, when its sagging door, warped and split by the weather, hangs by a single old hand-wrought hinge to its hewn pine lintel, leaving the floorless, barren interior to be invaded by every storm of snow and rain. And people were more honest in those days than in these days.

Unfortunately, for the goodman's peace of mind and the goodwife's comfort, some of the groceries are missed from time to time. Who is the thief? It is rumored that old man Tate's supplies have been stolen from the storehouse. The neighborhood is querying who it can be that has cherished such sinister designs upon these delicacies. A singular occurrence in this honest community; but one loss after another occurs, until the loser, taking the law into his own hands, secretly sets a spring-gun at the entrance of the outhouse. But he counted wrongly on his victim, for when goodwife Tate went to her storehouse in the morning, unconscious of the terrible fate awaiting her, she was killed outright by this deadly device.

It is a barren thread upon which this legend is strung, but, as is frequently the case in this later time, the accident grew into a crime before half the gossips had done with it. The question was at once raised whether any of the stuff was ever stolen, and the community, knowing of the quarrelsome living of this pair, did not hesitate to accuse the son William, known as the admiral, of having had evil designs upon his mother, choosing to look upon the loss of the stores as a myth, a ruse to get well rid of a woman whose disposition, if the legend is true, was not of angelic character.

The old man who had the key to the front door, and who kindly unlocked it for me, knew little more than the sombre outline I have here repeated. He did not know where the wife-murderer was apprehended, only that the Grand Jury at their inquest for the province found a true bill, upon which the arrest was subsequently made. To my own mind, the apprehension of the criminal ought to have been here in this old kitchen, in the deep of night, when its silences lent a sharper edge to remorse, or when the storm beat against the windows and the wind rattled up the side of the house, along the roof, and down the chimney, driving the smoke into the room to increase the discomfort of its tenant, while the great drops of rain came spluttering down into the fire as if to put it out. But the admiral is afraid of the dark now

adays, and the fire is piled high with fuel. The flame leaps up the chimney with a louder and more angry roar; the winds rise higher and the rain comes down in floods.

There is a face at the window, but the man is unconscious of the fact. There is a sharp rap on the door that leads to this same garden, but no response. The knocking is drowned in the tumult of the storm. The face appears at the window a second time, and the conscience-stricken man starts as if he has seen a spirit; a sharper, louder knock still, that arouses its inmate, who staggers to the door, to find the sheriff and his posse facing him, with all the unrelenting that looks out from the visage of the law. "What do you want?"

"We want you!"

Into the old kitchen that I see to-day steps the officer, dripping with wet, his posse at his heels, and pulling from his great-coat pocket the bill from the Grand Jury, the contents of which he makes known to his prisoner "in the king's name." The prisoner makes no sign. A dogged silence is best for him. There is nothing for him to do but to get his stout coat and go out into the November storm with these conservators of the public safety. The key is turned in the door, and only the old cat is left to watch the dying embers of her master's fire, while the old clock that reaches from the floor almost to the ceiling ticks slowly into the morning, to lapse into silence with its weights at their length's end at last, and only an ominous stillness reigns in the deserted mansion; for its owner is soon to be on trial for his life, and, worse still, is to be convicted by his peers of murder.

The days go by, and he is condemned at last to be hung by the neck until he is dead. His doom is upon him. Tate does not care. He is outwardly as unconcerned as the judge on the bench. Rich and influential friends at court have appealed to the king in his behalf. The day of execution comes nearer. How slowly the ship is sailing from England with the king's pardon and an order to the Governor of Massachusetts Bay for Tate's release; but what matters it how