Bad Hugh

A large, old-fashioned, weird-looking wooden building, with strangely

shaped bay windows and stranger gables projecting here and there from

the slanting roof, where the green moss clung in patches to the moldy

shingles, or formed a groundwork for the nests the swallows built year

after year beneath the decaying eaves. Long, winding piazzas, turning

sharp, sudden angles, and low, square porches, where the summer sunshine

held many a fantastic dance, and where the winter storm piled up its

drifts of snow, whistling merrily as it worked, and shaking the loosened

casement as it went whirling by.

Huge trees of oak and maple, whose

topmost limbs had borne and cast the leaf for nearly a century of years,

tall evergreens, among whose boughs the autumn wind ploughed mournfully,

making sad music for those who cared to listen, and adding to the

loneliness which, during many years, had invested the old place. A wide

spreading grassy lawn, with the carriage road winding through it, over

the running brook, and onward 'neath graceful forest trees, until it

reached the main highway, a distance of nearly half a mile.

A spacious garden in the rear, with bordered walks and fanciful mounds, with

climbing roses and creeping vines showing that somewhere there was a

taste, a ruling hand, which, while neglecting the somber building and

suffering it to decay, lavished due care upon the grounds, and not on

these alone, but also on the well-kept barns, and the whitewashed

dwellings in front, where numerous, happy, well-fed negroes lived and

lounged, for ours is a Kentucky scene, and Spring Bank a Kentucky home.

As we have described it so it was on a drear December night, when a

fearful storm, for that latitude, was raging, and the snow lay heaped

against the fences, or sweeping-down from the bending trees, drifted

against the doors, and beat against the windows, whence a cheerful light

was gleaming, telling of life and possible happiness within. There were

no flowing curtains before the windows, no drapery sweeping to the

floor, nothing save blinds without and simple shades within, neither of

which were doing service now, for the master of the house would have it

so in spite of his sister's remonstrances.

Some one might lose their way on that terrible night, he said, and the

blaze of the fire on the hearth, which could be seen from afar, would be

to them a beacon light to guide them on their way. Nobody would look in

upon them, as Adaline, or 'Lina as she chose to be called, and as all

did call her except himself, seemed to think there might, and even if

they did, why need she care? To be sure she was not quite as fixey as

she was on pleasant days when there was a possibility of visitors, and

her cheeks were not quite so red, but she was looking well enough, and

she'd undone all those little tags or braids which disfigured her so

shockingly in the morning, but which, when brushed and carefully

arranged, did give her hair that waving appearance she so much desired.