So it was, however, that I suspected nothing, although I felt sure that mystery there was; and being of somewhat an imaginative temper, I used to amuse myself by accounting for it in my own mind, weaving all sorts of strange and wild romances, and inventing the most horrible stories that can be conceived, until, as the shadows would fall dark around me, daunted by my own conceptions, I would make all secure and fast with trembling fingers, swing myself back across over the pool by my accustomed oak-branch, and run home as hard as my legs could carry me, haunted by indistinct and almost superstitious horror. Thus things went on, until at the end of summer I was at last detected in my stolen visits, and the whole mystery was cleared up. I remember as clearly as if I heard it now, the exclamation of terror and dismay uttered by the old gardener, who, having left some implement behind him on the lawn during the morning labors, had been forced to bend his unwilling steps back to the haunted ground to recover it. I could not but smile afterward, when he recounted to me his astonishment and terror at seeing the old summer-house, which never had been opened within the memory of man, with all its windows wide to the free air and evening sunshine--when he told me how often he turned back to seek aid from his fellows--how he almost believed that fiends or evil spirits were holding their foul sabbath there, and how he started aghast with horror, not now for himself, but for me, as he beheld the young Etonian stretched tranquilly upon the blood-stained couch--for those dark stains were of human gore--conning his task for the morrow. I rushed out of the place at his hurried outcry; a few words told my story, and plead my excuse--with the good, simple-minded rustic little excuse was needed--but it was not till after many sittings, and many a long afternoon's discourse, that I learned all the details of the sad event which had converted that fair pavilion into a place as terrible, to the ideas of the country folks, as a dark charnel-vault. "Ay!" said the old man, as he gazed fearfully about him, after I had persuaded him at length to cross the dreaded threshhold, "Ay! it is all as they tell, though not a man of them has ever seen it. There is the glass which the bullet broke, after passing right through his brain; and there is his blood, all spattered on the mirror. And look, young master, those spots on the table came from _her_ heart; and that couch you was lying on, is where they laid her when they took her up. See, it's all dabbled yet; and where your head was resting now, the dead girl's head lay, more than a hundred years since! Come away, master--come away! I never thought to have looked on these things, though I know all about them." "Oh, tell me--tell me about them!" I exclaimed. "I am not a bit afraid. Do tell me all about them."