[Footnote 1:  I have subsequently met several people who experienced the same phenomena in the house, which was standing a short time ago.]

“In style the front of the house was somewhat castellated.  Two semicircular bows, or half towers, placed at a suitable distance from each other, rose from the base to the summit of the edifice, to the height of four or five stairs; and were pierced, at every floor, with rows of stone-mullioned windows.  The flat wall between had larger windows, lighting the great hall, gallery, and upper apartments.  These windows were wholly composed of stained glass, engraved with every imaginable fantastic design—­imps, satyrs, dragons, witches, queer-shaped trees, hands, eyes, circles, triangles and cats.

“The towers, half included in the building, were completely circular within, and contained the winding stairs of the mansion; and whoever ascended them when a storm was raging seemed rising by a whirlwind to the clouds.

“In the upper rooms even the wildest screams of the hurricane were drowned in the rattling clamour of the assaulted casements.  When a gale of wind took the building in front, it rocked it to the foundations, and, at such times, threatened its instant demolition.

“Midway between the towers there stood forth a heavy stone porch with a Gothic gateway, surmounted by a battlemented parapet, made gable fashion, the apex of which was garnished by a pair of dolphins, rampant and antagonistic, whose corkscrew tails seemed contorted—­especially at night—­by the last agonies of rage convulsed.  The porch doors stood open, except in tremendous weather; the inner ones were regularly shut and barred after all who entered.  They led into a wide vaulted and lofty hall, the walls of which were decorated with faded tapestry, that rose, and fell, and rustled in the most mysterious fashion every time there was the suspicion—­and often barely the suspicion—­of a breeze.

“Interspersed with the tapestry—­and in great contrast to its antiquity—­were quite modern and very ordinary portraits of my family.  The general fittings and furniture, both of the hall and house, were sombre and handsome—­truss-beams, corbels, girders and panels were of the blackest oak; and the general effect of all this, augmented, if anything, by the windows, which were too high and narrow to admit of much light, was much the same as that produced by the interior of a subterranean chapel or charnel house.

“From the hall proceeded doorways and passages, more than my memory can now particularize.  Of these portals, one at each end conducted to the tower stairs, others to reception rooms and domestic offices.

“The whole of the house being too large for us, only one wing—­the right and newer of the two—­was occupied, the other was unfurnished, and generally shut up.  I say generally because there were times when either my mother or father—­the servants never ventured there—­forgot to lock the doors, and the handles yielding to my daring fingers, I surreptitiously crept in.