“You and your mother are brave, indeed, to dwell here; but good-night,” and the good physician entered his carriage and drove rapidly away from the old mansion, which had become known as “Spook Hall,” for the superstitious country folk and the coast dwellers vowed that the place was haunted--and certainly it was by cruel memories of red deeds done there one stormy night years before. CHAPTER V. A BOLD RESOLVE. It was several weeks after the attack on Mark Merrill, on his visit to the town of B---- after the doctor, and Mrs. Merrill had regained her health, old Peggy had returned to her duties, and the young sailor lad was thus able to resume his fishing and carrying the mail each week to and from several little hamlets on the coast. By the sale of his fish and the mail carrying, both most dangerous work in rough weather, the lad made a fair living for his mother, old Peggy, and himself, the only three dwellers in the once grand old mansion of Cliff Castle, then the wonder and admiration of the country folk, but for years left deserted and crumbling to decay, its hundreds of surrounding acres allowed to grow up with weeds and undergrowth. The furniture all had been left after the fateful tragedy beneath its roof, which had gained for it the name of Spook Hall, and the place had been shunned as a pestilence, until the moving into one wing of the Merrills, who had set at defiance the weird stories of the old mansion. There was an unsolved mystery hanging over the Merrills, for no one seemed to know who they were, or from whence they had come. The lad had visited B---- as one of a schooner’s crew, and not long after had come with his mother and Peggy, and sought a home in a cabin on the shore. After a run to Boston, where he had seen the agent of Cliff Castle, he had permission to move into the mansion, and for over a year they had dwelt there, and that was all that was known of them. At the risk of his life the brave boy had gone out in a storm one night and acted as pilot to a schooner that was in a dangerous anchorage, and this had won him fame along the coast, and the name of the boy pilot. Again, he had sailed out in his surf-skiff to a vessel adrift, and found it utterly deserted, so had gotten up sail, as well as he could, and run the craft to a safe anchorage. He had given notice of the fact, but no one had come to claim the pretty craft, which was a small schooner yacht, and Mark had begun to regard her as his own property. One afternoon he was standing upon the cliff watching the coming up of what threatened to be a terrible storm. The whole heavens to seaward were one mass of inky clouds, which were rising higher and higher, and ominous rumblings of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning grew louder and brighter as the tempest came sweeping on. From his position on the cliff he could look down into two basins, or bays.