Of course, during the time that I was thus occupied I heard the story about the well-known—so-called haunted house. But not being a superstitious man, and having absolutely no faith in the supernatural, I took but little, if any, interest in the story. Under different circumstances, perhaps, I might have been disposed to investigate the cause which had led a good property to get such a bad reputation, and induced hundreds of otherwise intelligent beings to give credence to the stupid stories about ghosts and hobgoblins. But now I was too much absorbed in my work of trying to solve the problem set me to be able to devote any attention to the idle gossip of how children had been terrified into fits, and the hair on the heads of yokels had risen perpendicular, at the sight of ghostly forms fl
