Life — December 11, 1884 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 Rogers THE MYSTERY OF HOLCOMBE HALL. By CARLSBAD. TX broad acres of the Holcombe Estate were clothed with a mantle of glittering white, and the merry mu- sic of distant chimes was faintly borne by the frosty air over the snow-clad hills. Shouts of joyous laughter rang through the Hall, while gay groups of young people played “ kiss-in-the- ting,” and the whole house was pervaded with a cheerful odor of burning back-logs, steaming plum-pudding, peppermint drops and paregoric—you ‘re right !—of course it was Christmas! What else could explain the emptied stockings hanging from the mantel-shelf, the seasonable greetings or the dyspepsia of the children? Nothing. “ Estelle,” Judge Holcomb had said to his daughter a week before in town, “ what do you say to spending the holidays out at the Hall, and having a real English Christmas with a house full of guests, a Christmas-tree, private theatricals, moonlight sleigh-rides, a fox-hunt and a pink-coat ball?” “Oh, Papa!” she cried, “ How delightful! Just what I would adore/ You ‘re as sweet as you can be!"and she emphasized her exclamations by kiss- ing her paternal relative on what she was wont to term “ his deliciously bald old head.” For many years it had been rumored that Hol- combe Hall was haunted, and stories of uncanny sights and sounds were rife in the neighborhood. Few of the servants would have dared to cross the open fields and enter the woodland to the east of the house, and none of them (not even the old butler), would have ventured alone in the corridors of the North Wing after night-fall. The Judge was well aware of this, and he determined to make use of it, in the entertainment of his guests. “In addition,” he continued to Estelle, “ In order to lend an air of reality to the ghost stories we have told of the Hall, I have engaged Brown the comedian to play spectre. He is going to stay at the inn and come over every evening after dark to waylay any of the men whom he can catch in dusky corners.” “ What a lark,” said his daughter. “ Now tell me, Papa, | whom you have asked—the Mansfields, 1 suppose, and their children, Mr. Huntley and his wife, the Horners, and May, Elsie and Isabelle; who are the men?” “ Fred Farringdon and Colonel Clayton,” enumerated the Judge, “the two Oliver boys, and that extremely entertain- | ing and amiable fellow, Mr. Trotter.” | I don’: like him at all, as you know, id Estelle in a tone of deep disappointment. “ But you surely have not for- gotten Harry Treharne, Papa?” “No,” replied her father. “Then he's coming?" she asked brightly, her face light- ing up again. “ Not much!" said the gentleman with decision. “Not if 1 know it! Here I've provided every amusement, and asked a jolly chap like Trotter, and now I suppose you ‘re dissatisfied because I ‘ve left out that good looking, good-for-nothing, | penniless Treharne! It's just like a girl!” comicbooks.com