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He could not conceive how a sane man could think like that.

As Abner hurried to escape any carelessly directed lightning bolt the deity might hurl, a rabbit leaped up before him and ran across his path from right to left. The young man stopped and regarded it with a mental oath.

"Damn that rabbit," he thought; "it'll bring me bad luck. It could jest as easy have run the other way."

He stood several moments, perturbed over the course of the rabbit. The omen of its direction brought before Abner the purpose of his journey and predicted for it an unfortunate outcome.

In this grayer mood he approached the dilapidated old manor on the hill. From the side Abner could see the weather-beaten columns of the piazza which were two stories in height. A little balcony which marked the second story was stuck halfway between the floor and ceiling of the piazza. A long ell of rooms ran back from the front chambers. Here and there a piece of weather boarding had fallen down or was hanging by an end, displaying a black opening in the gray wall. Several windows needed reglazing; others had been recently mended, to judge by their yellow, unpainted sashes. The old house was in its last stages, but it still had the bleak dignity of that old South which Abner had never known.

Abner had been born in this manor. In it his mother had spent her lonely and finally unbalanced life; his grandfather, old Judge Jefferson Coltrane, had built it; and his ne'er-do-well father, Linsey Teeftallow, had lost it. Now this melancholy family history recurred to Abner's mind as he approached the house on the hill. Certain salient features reasserted themselves from the misty memories of his childhood. He recalled the little balcony thrust out above the great door of the central hall; and the epic arc of the well sweep which thrust its pole, it had seemed to his childish eyes, quite to the sky—and there it was now, surprisingly shortened by the years.

The well sweep, the little balcony, an old horse-apple tree,