"'Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless! Thy blood is cold! Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with?'" "Begone! You're doomed! doomed! doomed!" shrieked the witch, retreating into her hut. Cap laughed and stroked the neck of her horse, saying: "Gyp, my son, that was old Nick's wife, who was with us just this instant, and now, indeed, Gyp, if we are to see the Hidden House this afternoon, we must get on!" And so saying she followed the path that wound half-way around the Punch Bowl and then along the side of a little mountain torrent called the Spout, which, rising in an opposite mountain, leaped from rock to rock, with many a sinuous turn, as it wound through the thicket that immediately surrounded the Hidden House until it finally jetted through a subterranean channel into the Devil's Punch Bowl. Capitola was now, unconsciously, upon the very spot, where, seventeen years before, the old nurse had been forcibly stopped and compelled to attend the unknown lady. As Capitola pursued the path that wound lower and lower into the dark valley the gloom of the thicket deepened. Her thoughts ran on all the horrible traditions connected with the Hidden House and Hollow--the murder and robbery of the poor peddler--the mysterious assassination of Eugene Le Noir; the sudden disappearance of his youthful widow; the strange sights and sounds reported to be heard and seen about the mansion; the spectral light at the upper gable window; the white form seen flitting through the chamber; the pale lady that in the dead of night drew the curtains of a guest that once had slept there; and above all Capitola thought of the beautiful, strange girl, who was now an inmate of that sinful and accursed house! And while these thoughts absorbed her mind, suddenly, in a turning of the path, she came full upon the gloomy building. CHAPTER V. THE HIDDEN HOUSE. The very stains and fractures on the wall Assuming features solemn and terrific, Hinted some tragedy of that old hall Locked up in hieroglyphic! Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread; But to one gloomy window pointing mostly, The while some secret inspiration said, That chamber is the ghostly! --Hood. The Hidden House was a large, irregular edifice of dark red sandstone with its walls covered closely with the clinging ivy, that had been clipped away only from a few of the doors and windows, and its roof over-shadowed by the top branches of gigantic oaks and elms that clustered around and nearly concealed the building. It might have been a long-forsaken house, for any sign of human habitation that was to be seen about it. All was silent, solitary and gloomy. As Capitola drew up her horse to gaze upon its somber walls she wondered which was the window at which the spectral light and ghostly face had been seen. She soon believed that she had found it.