THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS; A ROMANCE OF THE BLUE RIDGE. CHAPTER I. THE MYSTERY. Is this the hall? The nettle buildeth bowers, EARLY in the autumn of 18—, we were journeying leisurely through the majestic and beautiful mountain and valley scenery in the interior of Virginia. It was near the close of a golden October day that we reached the picturesque little village of Hillsborough, situated upon a very high point of land, and in the midst of abrupt, rocky, treecapped peaks, with green dents of fertile soil between. It was a town of rocks-founded upon rocks-hemmed in by rocks-the dwelling-houses, out-houses, fences, pig-pens, chicken-coops, all built of rocks of every conceivable variegated hue. It was, indeed, a beautiful and brilliant piece of mosaic work, up and down a ground of shaded green. It was as radiant and many colored as the forest in autumn, and flashed and sparkled in the golden sun like an open casket of jewels. We reached the quaint old inn in time for a late dinner. There we expected to meet the carriage of a friend who resided at a farm about five miles distant across the mountains, and at whose house we were going to spend a few weeks. We found our friend Mrs. Fairfield, waiting for us, and as soon as dinner was over we set out for Cedar cliffs. Our road lay west through a savagely beautiful country, breaking itself up toward a lofty range of blue mountains encircling the western horizon, and behind which glowed and burned the crimson sunset sky. We approached the celebrated pass of the Bear's Walk, from the highest point of which an extensive view of the valley was afforded. As we began to ascend the mountain, I fell into one of those indolent, pleasant, but rather selfish reveries, which the gathering shadows of twilight, the darkening scene, and the heavy, sleepy motion of the carriage, seemed to invite. From this reverie I was at length aroused by my indulgent companion, who, laying her hand upon my arm, and pointing across me through the window on the right, said, "I wish you to observe that house." We had just slowly reached the summit of the mountain, and the carriage had stopped to breathe the horses. I looked out at the window on the right. It was yet early enough in the evening, and there was light enough left to see, pitching precipitately down below us, a flight of cliffs, the bases of which were lost in abysses of twilight gloom and foliage, and the circular range of which swept round in a ring, shutting in a small, but deep and cup-shaped valley. Down in the deeps of this darkening vale loomed luridly a large old farm-house of red sand-stone. The prevalent tone of the picture was gloom. Down into a reverie about the deep, dark vale, and darker house, swooped my fancy again. The carriage was in slow motion. I drew in my head. "Did you notice the house?" "Yes; and through that deep sea of dark and floating shadows, itself the densest shadow, it looms like some phantom, some ghost of a dead home "Say a murdered home." "I wish you wouldn't break a well-rounded sentence with any sort of improvement-ghost of a dead home about to melt away again in the surrounding gloom." "Well said-better even than you think. Yet that old, half ruined farm-house is the centre of one of the largest, most beautiful, fertile, highlycultivated, and productive estates in all Virginia. If you saw it under the noonday summer sun, you would see a variegated ground-view of vast fields of wheat and rye, yellow and ripening for the harvest; corn, green, waving in the sun; redblossomed clover, pastures of blue grass rolling down the sides of the hills behind us, and stretching out on all sides of the old house, and disappearing under the bow of the circular-bounding of mountains. You hear now the mellowed tinkle of a waterfall, which, springing from the cliffs we have just left, flows down the sides of the rocks, and reaching the bottom of the cup-like vale, spreads itself into many little, clear rills, well watering its fertile fields, red pasturage, and heavy woods. This estate, with its fine water, its wealth of iron ore and coal in the encircling mountains, its abundance of game in the forest and fish in the |