Every time when they found her she was wandering about the place, stopping now and then as if to listen, then flitting on again, saying in a sad singsong, "I'm coming, Lumen! Oh, I'll come back!" Naturally, persons of a superstitious nature began to imagine that they, too, heard strange cries at the deserted farm, for no one ever lived there subsequently.

Very likely they did hear cries--the cries of wild animals; that old clearing in the woods was a great place for bears, foxes, raccoons and "lucivees." A year or two before we young folks went home to live on the old farm the town sold this deserted lot at auction for unpaid taxes.

Some years before, vagrant woodsmen had accidentally burned the old house; but the barn, a weathered, gray structure, was still intact.

Since the land adjoined other timber lots that the old Squire owned, he bid it off and let it lie unoccupied except as a pasture where sheep, or young stock that needed little care, could be put away for the summer.

The soil was good, and the grass was excellent in quality.
One year, in May, after we had repaired the brush fence, we turned into it our three Morgan colts along with two Percherons from a stock farm near the village, a Morgan three-year-old belonging to our neighbors, the Edwardses, three colts owned by other neighbors, and a beautiful sorrel three-year-old mare, the pet of young Mrs.Kennard, wife of the principal at the village academy.