Webster was still President of the United States;
questions to which Middleton returned answers that led to no further
conversation.
These little preliminaries over, they continued their ramble through the
house, going through tortuous passages, up and down little flights of
steps, and entering chambers that had all the charm of discoveries of
hidden regions; loitering about, in short, in a labyrinth calculated to
put the head into a delightful confusion. Some of these rooms contained
their time-honored furniture, all in the best possible repair, heavy,
dark, polished; beds that had been marriage beds and dying beds over and
over again; chairs with carved backs; and all manner of old world
curiosities; family pictures, and samplers, and embroidery; fragments of
tapestry; an inlaid floor; everything having a story to it, though, to
say the truth, the possessor of these curiosities made but a bungling
piece of work in telling the legends connected with them. In one or two
instances Hammond corrected him.
By and by they came to what had once been the principal bed-room of the
house; though its gloom, and some circumstances of family misfortune that
had happened long ago, had caused it to fall into disrepute, in latter
times; and it was now called the Haunted Chamber, or the Ghost's Chamber.
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