Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular
in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus
the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned
windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very
nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the
quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park
and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly
peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and
tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a
superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we
heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere
fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time,
exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. Our mother
had died when we were young, and our other parent being, though a
kind father, much absorbed in affairs of various kinds, as an
active magistrate and landlord, there was no one to check the
unwholesome stream of tradition with which our plastic minds were
inundated in the company of nurses and servants.
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