The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories | Page 5

that was
shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire
some half a mile off--a house that nobody would take. And the natural
inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.
No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so
solemn to me, as the early morning. In the summer-time, I often rise
very early, and repair to my room to do a day's work before breakfast,
and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness
and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the
being surrounded by familiar faces asleep-- in the knowledge that those
who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly
unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious
condition to which we are all tending--the stopped life, the broken
threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished
but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of
the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The color and the chill have the

same association. Even a certain air that familiar household objects take
upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the night into
the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its
counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in
death, into the old youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition
of my father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever
came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards
me, on a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his
hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern.
Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of
bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to him more than
once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand
upon his shoulder, as I thought--and there was no such thing.
For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable, I
find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any house would
be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning; and a haunted
house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then.
I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon my
mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his door-step. I
bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the house.
"Is it haunted?" I asked.
The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, "I say
nothing."
"Then it IS haunted?"
"Well!" cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the
appearance of desperation--"I wouldn't sleep in it."
"Why not?"
"If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to ring
'em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang 'em; and all
sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why, then," said the

landlord, "I'd sleep in that house."
"Is anything seen there?"
The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former appearance
of desperation, called down his stable-yard for "Ikey!"
The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red
face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a
turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with
mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to
be in a fair way--if it were not pruned--of covering his head and
overrunning his boots.
"This gentleman wants to know," said the landlord, "if anything's seen
at the Poplars."
"'Ooded woman with a howl," said Ikey, in a state of great freshness.
"Do you mean a cry?"
"I mean a bird, sir."
"A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you ever see her?"
"I seen the howl."
"Never the woman?"
"Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together."
"Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?"
"Lord bless you, sir! Lots."
"Who?"
"Lord bless you, sir! Lots."

"The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his shop?"
"Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn't go a-nigh the place. No!"
observed the young man, with considerable feeling; "he an't overwise,
an't Perkins, but he an't such a fool as THAT."
(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins's knowing
better.)
"Who is--or who was--the hooded woman with the owl? Do you
know?"
"Well!" said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched
his head with the other, "they say, in general, that she