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It was several weeks after the attack on Mark Merrill, on his visit to the town of B—— after the doctor, and Mrs. Merrill had regained her health, old Peggy had returned to her duties, and the young sailor lad was thus able to resume his fishing and carrying the mail each week to and from several little hamlets on the coast.

By the sale of his fish and the mail carrying, both most dangerous work in rough weather, the lad made a fair living for his mother, old Peggy, and himself, the only three dwellers in the once grand old mansion of Cliff Castle, then the wonder and admiration of the country folk, but for years left deserted and crumbling to decay, its hundreds of surrounding acres allowed to grow up with weeds and undergrowth.

The furniture all had been left after the fateful tragedy beneath its roof, which had gained for it the name of Spook Hall, and the place had been shunned as a pestilence, until the moving into one wing of the Merrills, who had set at defiance the weird stories of the old mansion.