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What Happened Easter Eve. IERCE and wild the March wind whisted the Revolution. The brook was frozen tight, the ridges of snow lay along the mountain gorges, and old Greta hastened Into the house, her head tied up in a woolen shawl, like a ship scudding before a gale. "Miss Becky! Miss Becky!" she screamed, "the weasels has got into the henhouse and killed every solitary fowl! Bled 'em to death as neat as if it was done with a lancet." At the same moment Lillian Darling had rushed into the only room where they kept a flre —the great, shining, yellow-walled kitchen —crying out: "Oh, Rebecca, the violets are frozen, and so are all of the lilies that you were saving for the Easter market. Oh, isn't it dreadful!" Rebecca Darling laid down her tablet and pen "You're a pair of Cassandras," said she, with enforced composure. "Is there any other piece of had news you have got to tell me?" "I say, Miss Becky.' called a bass voice from tlie shed adjoining, "I ain't fit to come in where folks is, but I'll jest have to go to Squire Par lett.'s well for water: our chain pump's friz as light as a drum!" f 1 F "It does seem as if we had the wuat luck of anybody," sighed old Greta. Lill went up to her sister and passed her arm lovingly around the long, slim neck. "Conic to breakfast, Becky." said she. "At least the coffee pot hasn't exploded, and the last of the eggs is beaten into a delicious omelet. I should like meat for breakfast, but as long as Adonijah has such a limitless appetite I shall have to con tent myself with biscuits and coffee." "There it is, Lill," said the elder sister, "I was just adding up our accounts and I find we can't afford the luxury of retainers. Adonijah must go." LIU clasped her hands. "Adonijah! Oh, Becky! Poor Adonijah, who works so zealously all day long and worships you as if you were his patron saint. But what is to become of him?" "I don't know, Lill. I only know that adverse fortune has proved too much for me. I had calcu lated on sending those fowls to the Boston mar ket at fancy prices, and on realizing a considerable sum on the Easter flowers. But they are both gone at one fell swoop. And, oh! Lill, this is to be a disastrous Easter for us!" "Don't talk in that way," said Lill, stamping her foot on the floor. "Easter is never disastrous." At this juncture, honest Adonijah, all uncon scious that his fate was trembling in the balance, oame in with a pail of water—a ruddy-faced, gipsey-eyed boy of sixteen, who regarded Miss Becky as little short of a guardian angel. "I say, Miss Becky," began he, "is it true?" "Is what true, Adonijah?" "That this 'ere house is haunted?" "What nonsense, Adonijah!" 'Just what I told 'era myself," nodded the lad. "But Squire Taiiett says there's a picture of the house in the New York Sunday paper, with 'The Haunted House of Juniper Mountain' writ under it, and a long story of a Revolutionary soldier that was shot down at the upper window, over the porch, and that comes here moonlight nights, all in his buff togsery." "Oh, Becky!" cried Llll, with a little, hysterical laugh, "I knew that man was a reporter, though he made believe he was a surveyor, and wanted to run lines parallel with the new turnpike." "Well, what difference does it make?" said Becky, dejectedly. "Nothing signifies very much now. If the New York people like to open their eyes over a ghost story " "But is it true," urged Adonijah, "about the soldier, I mean?" "Why, yes, I believe it is," abstractedly an swered Becky: "it was my great grandfather, Ruggles. Shot down one Easter eve by a Hes sian—and my great grandfather followed the as sassin half way across the swamp with a rusty scythe—the first implement of warfare he could Chester F. Baird. seize upon—and cut him down just beyond the big yellow pine that was struck by lightning last fall." Adonijah rubbed his hands gleefully. "Then, by hookey, there ought to be two ghosts! And if I " "Hold your tongue, Adonijah," shrilly Inter rupted old Greta, bringing the hot cornbread which she had planned for a breakfast surprise. "Your bacon and fried potatoes is a-waitin' for you out in the shed, and the quicker it's eaten the quicker you'll get back to your wood chopping!" "Gee-whillikins!" muttered Adonijah, "why didn't I never hear these ghost stories before? I mean to watch the window over the porch the very first moonlight night." As spring dawned slowly over the land Adoni jah's blunt perception awakened to more facts than one. First, that his beloved Miss Becky and Lill were in sore need of money; second, that there was some talk of selling the old house, and that Squire Parlett had offered three thousand dollars for it. 1;' 1 Wi_: iiiin*-n;"3^yIHHTIti ff^MßmTOtrWyjr^'"" ' f * I : R:-: "I {imrm— 'ZJ^'^^-F^Wl I "wf i^BR SBbS^ ' "a *■■; '- - Jf^^Hi ?■ JH' a fly Jalrok t• "■ a ' <*B^f • • ;,^. »ni.lil^HPlll 's iff Mr *' -y u ,._^' wMTmMm ', »• &sl, f*7»^ "The ghost .;> I V^S^.'W'lS^ ' MH&^^B a stand In' V^T- jft - . MU^'i -H HWa^^St at the window." f , JSmi, -*' S |B»iI!'v S-i^^^-'J-*^'? "It's only a tumbledown ruin," said the Squire. "Over a hundred years old, and nothing solid about it but the chimbly and only a few acres of stony mountain land. Nobody else won't give that for it!" "Three thousand dollars!" exclaimed Lill. "Why, the man wants to swindle us!" "But we can't stay here and starve," sighed Becky. "Of course the place is worth more than that; but there is no market for real estate on .Juniper Mountain. We must sell out at some price and get nearer New York or Boston." "Oh, Becky, how very hard the world is!" sighed Lill. "If we could only raise a clear sum of three thousand dollars, we might run a summer board ing house on Glassy Lake," said calculating Becky. "But the squire wants half the money to remain on mortgage." "And for all I can see he Is likely to have every thing his own way," s.ighed Becky. "Oh, look there, Lill, who's that?" "An artist sketching the place," said Llll, frown ing. "Sitting on the wall exactly as if he owned it. Send Adonijah to order him off!" "No, don't," interposed gentle Becky. "The old house is picturesque, I suppose, against the March sunset." "Hut there was another there this morning, Miss," said Adonijah, "and two women asking at the swing gate if this 'ere was the 'Haunted House.' " "It's getting a deal too much talked about to suit me," growled old Greta. "Most everybody's got something to say about it every time I go to the village. They saw for sartln there's two or three seen the ghost." "Let them talk," said Becky. "Talk does no barm," But "talk" naturally produced a sensation —and the sensation ended in a regular string of sight seers, who nearly drove old Greta distracted by asking for glasses of water and crocus blooms, and propounding intern) inable questions. "I wish the ghost was in Jerl.-ho." scolded Greta. But one night she came scampering in from a visit to a crony down the road. "f'vp seen it." she cried. "I've sepn it with these eyes! The ghoil a-stnndin" at the win dow! And r wnrn't the only one as seen it, nyther! There was three or four others staring down by the hemlock tree — n newspaper man and the picture-maker of a New York paper—and we only see It one min ute. Call Adonljah up! Let him tell them fools to go about their busi ness! It's bad enough to be scared out o' one's wits without bein' mobed by a set of curios ity hunters. And Adoni jali's no 1 business to go to bed before nine o'clock." "Adonijah works hard daytimes, and needs hia sleep," said Becky. "Tffo people will go away in time. It's rather annoy ing, but " "They actually asked leave to go 1 through the house," said Greta, "and I told 'em you wouldn't hear to it; and the newspaper man tried to give me a dollar, but I throwed it back in his face. But I seen the ghost—yes, I did!" , And she shivered and threw an apron over her head. Scarcely a week had elapsed when two gentle men knocked at the door and requested to see Becky and Lill Darling. They were the Identical newspaper man, whose subsidy had been scorned, and the artist from the New York Sunday paper, and they offered the two sisters the sum of six thousand dollars in cash for the old place on Juniper Mountain. "Not that it's worth that," exclaimed Mr. Joyce, "but it has become rather prominent of late—a sort of Mecca for superstitious people. And there is something rather strange about that porch win dow- —the light on the llittle window panes, or the refraction of the moonbeams, or some curious ef- MAGAZINE SECTION 8