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.
At the highest point of the building, immediately under the sharp angle
of the roof, in the gable and nearest to view, was a solitary window.
The ivy that clung tightly to the stone, covering every portion of the
wall at this end, was clipped away from that high placed, dark and
lonely window by which Capitola's eyes were strangely fascinated.
While thus she gazed in wonder, interest and curiosity, though without
the least degree of superstitious dread, a vision flashed upon her
sight that sent the blood from her ruddy cheek to her brave heart, and
shook the foundations of her unbelief!
For while she gazed, suddenly that dark window was illumed by a
strange, unearthly light that streamed forth into the gloomy evening
air, and touched with blue flame the quivering leaves of every tree in
its brilliant line! In the midst of this lighted window appeared a
white female face wild with woe! And then the face suddenly vanished
and the light was swallowed up in darkness!
Capitola remained transfixed!
"Great heaven!" she thought, "can these things really be! Have the
ghostly traditions of this world truth in them at last? When I heard
this story of the haunted window I thought some one had surely imagined
or invented it! Now I have seen for myself; but if I were to tell what
I have seen not one in a hundred would believe me!"
While these startling thoughts disturbed her usual well-balanced mind,
a vivid flash of lightning, accompanied by a tremendous peal of thunder
and a heavy fall of rain, roused her into renewed activity.