Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest and bravest have quailed under them. Skepticism may laugh, but it would be more profitably employed in endeavoring to solve the problems which concern the connection between the material and the spiritual universe. Why is it that adults, as well as children, are impressed with a certain uneasiness in the dark? Not a fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents, or of any thing upon which the mind can reason, or of which the senses are cognizant; but a vague consciousness of invisible influences. In the daylight we have no such sensations; they belong exclusively to silence and darkness. As a child, I grew up in the awe of these influences, fostered by loneliness and the moody companionship of a wayward woman, who held little intercourse with the outer world, and shut herself up in dreams and superstitions. An incident which occurred at this period helped to give a supernatural turn to many circumstances that were, no doubt, capable of a simple solution. Toward the extremity of a court to the south of the old pile, there was a chasm in the ground, partly filled up with loose stones and brambles. The whole place was over-run with grass and weeds, and the walls and outbuildings that surrounded it were in ruins. I had heard that this spot, which gaped so grimly through the tall, lank bushes and accumulated rubbish, was formerly the entrance to a series of subterranean galleries, that had been excavated below the foundations for the purpose of concealing troops, or stowing away prisoners, in times of trouble; and that they had been used in that way during the Civil War, when the mansion stood out a long siege against some of Fairfax's generals. An irresistible curiosity to explore these galleries seized upon me. I was fascinated by the very fear with which the stories related about them had inspired me. I never could pass that yawning chasm, which, now nearly choked up, was hardly wide enough to admit of the descent of a grown person, without longing to plunge into its depths. I often lingered there in the twilight, when the shadows were falling about, enhancing the terror and the temptation; and one evening in the autumn I took courage, and, clearing away the brambles with trembling hands, I forced myself down, bringing with me a torrent of stones and earth.