'
'She had--she has--a singular taste in reading,'
I managed to say, mastering my agitation.
'Yes. And now perhaps you will have the kind-
ness to explain how you knew her name and that of
the ship she sailed in.'
'You talked of her in your sleep,' I said.
A week later we were towed into the port of New
York. But the Morrow was never heard from.
THE MIDDLE TOE OF THE RIGHT FOOT
1
IT is well known that the old Manton house is
haunted. In all the rural district near about, and
even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one
person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it;
incredulity is confined to those opinionated persons
who will be called 'cranks' as soon as the useful
word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne
of the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the
house is haunted is of two kinds: the testimony of
disinterested witnesses who have had ocular proof,
and that of the house itself. The former may be
disregarded and ruled out on any of the various
grounds of objection which may be urged against it
by the ingenious; but facts within the observation of
all are material and controlling.
In the first place, the Manton house has been un-
occupied by mortals for more than ten years, and
with its outbuildings is slowly falling into decay--
a circumstance which in itself the judicious will
hardly venture to ignore. It stands a little way off the
loneliest reach of the Marshall and Harriston road,
in an opening which was once a farm and is still dis-
figured with strips of rotting fence and half covered
with brambles overrunning a stony and sterile soil
long unacquainted with the plough.
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