"I believe it was you," said Philo, looking at the mischievous lad with sudden prescience.
And though Jack never owned it, that was a conviction that never departed from the minds of the two, and when they died, long after, he found himself bound by substantial reasons to remember the Two Ghosts of New London Turnpike.
There is a lonely old house situated close down by the sea, in one of the most secluded yet lonely nooks, not far from one of the most noted resorts on the seaboard; an old gray stone house, showing the marks of the many wild storms which have beat upon it in all the long years which have passed over it; a house whose bareness and desolation are enlivened but little by the heavy-trailing ivy which creeps over a portion of it and in which many wild birds build their nests. Old as it is, it seems never to have been finished,--rather to have been left without any of the last touches which complete a building, and to have thus stood for many years, with the wild winds and storms of the coast beating against it. Here and there a shutter is torn from its hinges, and lies where it fell under the window. The point is entirely gone from cornice and colonnade, and the floor of the latter, which had never been painted, is old and worm-eaten. The grounds about it are an intricate tangle of brushwood. Flowering shrubs, which had been planted here and there, have grown up into wild and unshapely trees. Rose-bushes and wild vines choke up the paths, and the gates and fences are broken and dilapidated. There is one path, which leads down to the beach, which has been kept open, and has, apparently, been often trodden; but apart from this there seems to be but little sign of life around the old gray house. There is, indeed, one red-curtained window upon the side which looks out to sea, and here a bright light is always burning at night, and all night, and the sailors have learned to watch for it as for a signal; and the place is known to them as the Lone-Star House. Let us watch around the house, and perhaps it will have a story to tell,--such places often do have, lonely and deserted as they seem; stories often full enough of human love and heart-break. "It looks as though it might be haunted," say the gay parties who ride by it from the fashionable resort a few miles away. Yes, and there is no doubt but what it is.