Three Oaks was a house, and an old one at that. It still stands to-day on the road mentioned above, which is, as every one knows, in the north-west corner of Manhattan Island, and extends from the little village whose name it bears to the 155th street station of the elevated road. It was a large house and an old house; it stood in the center of a thick growth of oaks, surrounded by a stretch of uncultivated ground, and divided from the road by a high stone wall. A more gloomy, desolate-looking old rookery it would have been difficult to have found. And yet Three Oaks had been a handsome place in its day. But that day had long since passed. For ten years, at least, old Jeremiah Mansfield, its former owner had lived there alone. It was five years since he had been found murdered in his bed. This was the work of burglars. They had broken into the old house in the night, in the hope of obtaining a large sum in money, of which the strange old man, little better than a miser, was supposed to be possessed. Whether they had succeeded in finding it no one ever knew. The burglars were not caught--the dead lips of the murdered man never told the tale. From that night Three Oaks had remained deserted, and was fast sinking to ruin and decay. To whom it belonged few in the neighborhood could have told, but every one had seen the lights--seen them not only once, but again and again. And who but the ghost of old Miser Mansfield himself would think of prowling about the dust-laden rooms of Three Oaks at midnight? That was precisely what the neighbors wanted to know. You could not have hired one of them to have approached the old house after dark. Indeed, some timid persons objected even to passing it on the public road after the shades of night had begun to fall. Upon the evening of the day following the events of the last few chapters, at a little before midnight, a solitary pedestrian might have been observed picking his way gingerly along the Fort Washington road, opposite the moldering stone wall surrounding Three Oaks, sheltering himself beneath a large alpaca umbrella from the rain which all day long had been falling in torrents, rendering the snow of two days before a slushy mass beneath the feet. Might have been observed, did we say? The qualification was well put. Surely no one save a person whose errand was most pressing would venture out in a spot so lonely upon a night like this. The wind whirling down the road from the Hudson and the heights of the Palisades beyond played with the alpaca umbrella as with some child's toy, the rain coming down in what appeared in the darkness an almost unbroken sheet, has drenched the clothes of this unfortunate traveler as to make them cling like so many plasters to his body. Indeed, so utterly saturated has he become, that it seems a matter of wonder that he does not abandon the umbrella altogether and boldly face the storm. Slump! Slump! Slump!