Between this gable - which faced the road, and had four lines of windows in it, besides a basement row - and the back or town door, as described, was one squarish, roomy window, out of relation to all the rest, and perhaps twelve feet above the ground. This, as might be guessed, was on the landing of the stairs within; for the great door and front of the residence being at the opposite side, the whole of the space at the townward gable, to the width of seventeen feet, was a noble hall about forty feet long, lofty, and with pilasters in architectural style, and lighted by two great windows in the gable and the square window on the stairway.

The stairway itself was a beautiful piece of work and proportion, rising from the floor in ten railed steps to the landing at the square window, where a space several feet square commanded both the great front door and the windows in the gable, and also the yard behind; thence, at right angles, the flight of steps rose along the back wall to a second landing over the dumpy back-door, and, by a third leap, returned at right angles, to the floor above, making what is called the well of the stairway to be exceedingly spacious, and it opened to the garret floor.

No doubt this cool, great hall was designed to be the centre of a large mansion, yet it had lost nothing in agreeableness by becoming, instead, the largest room in the house, receiving abundant daylight, and it was large enough for either a feast or public worship, and such was its frequent use.

Built by a tyrannical, eccentric man at the beginning of the century, it had passed through several families until a Quaker named Cowgill, who afterwards became a Methodist, and who held no slaves and was kind to black people, made it his property, and superintended a tannery and mill within sight of it.

He was frequently absent for weeks, especially in the bilious autumn season, and allowed his domestics to assemble their friends and the general race, at odd times, in the great hallway, for such rational enjoyments as they might select.

In truth, the owner of the house desired it to get a more cheerful reputation; for the negroes, in particular, considered it haunted.

The first owner, it was said, had amused himself in the great hall-room by making his own children stand on their toes, switching their feet with a whip when they dropped upon their soles from pain or fatigue; and his own son finally shot at him through the great northern door with a rifle or pistol, leaving the mark to this day, to be seen by a small panel set in the original pine. The third owner, a lawyer, often entertained travelling clergymen here; and, on one occasion, the eccentric Reverend Lorenzo Dow met on the stairs a stranger and bowed to him, and afterwards frightened the host's family by telling it, since they were not aware of any stranger in the house. The room over the great door had always been considered the haunt of peculiar people, who molested nobody living, but appeared there in some quiet avocation, and vanished when pressed upon.