The Argosy — page 328: what you’re looking at

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

308 Nelly Devitt's Ghost. . Tite Anite. as long as she needed his care, for a week after she died, he followed her to the grave, and, as I have said, the old place was shut up and deserted. But I must not forget to tell you what none of our keenest gossips had found out before old Devitt’s death disclosed it tothem. Nelly had a little daughter, born and brought up among her mother’s people, to whom the old man left the little that remained of his savings, with the injunction that she should never come near Wyndhurst, but stay in the place of her birth till the end of her days. It was not long after this that the old lady died. She made a miser- able end of it, I’m told; for I was not often at the Hall myself in those days. I had just got married, and was full of my housekeeping cares ; besides, the housekeeper did not encourage much coming and going in the servants’ hall, for the old lady seemed “‘ breaking up,” as they called it, and she was often taken with fits of screaming and horror that frightened those who had to wait on her, and they didn’t want to have it talked over in the town. Her grandson had died abroad years before, and there was nobody but the ladies left to keep up the family honours. It was to these ladies the Devitt house belonged as a part of the Wynd- hurst property; but when Jane talked me into the notion of renting it, it was to their agent I went. He was an old man, an attorney, very sharp In money matters. No one had ever come after the place, to try and rent it, all these years ; yet as soon as he saw that I was willing to take it, he put on a serious business face, and began to talk about its value and the advantages of its location. ‘Now, Mr. Willet,” says I, ‘‘ you know as well as I do that the place has a bad name; that there isn’t a man, woman, or child, in Wyndhurst that would live in it for a gift, except it be myself. If you've a mind to let me have the place for the taxes and water-rate, I'll take it and clean it and put it in order, which will be a heavy job, to judge from the looks of it.” He hemmed and hawed, and talked of the bargain I was making, for a while, and at last gave me a five years’ lease, which, to tell you the truth, I was almost afraid to take. If I had it to do over again, I would have left the lease in Mr. Willet’s office rather than bound myself as a tenant when I came to see the wretched-looking place it was, choked up with dirt and dust, and shut out from light by the broken boards that were nailed across its broken windows. But soap and water, and brooms and brushes, did more towards re- conciling me to my new possession than all Mr. Willet’s congratulations on my cheap rent. Jane and I went to work with a will, and as soon as the glaziers had supplied the places of the broken hghts, we poli the glass and scoured the floors and window-frames, till, as Jenny aed we got the haunted-look off things. It was a large house—far too large for us; but we thought it was COMIC SOOKS.CoOmM _