The first few weeks of May had been, to my starved city eyes, a dazzling pageant of beauty.

The landscape glowed with yellow daffodils, pink peach blossoms, and the bright green of new wheat; the fields were alive with the frisky joyousness of spring lambs and colts, turned out to pasture.

It was with a keen feeling of reluctance that I faced the prospect of New York's brick and stone and asphalt.

My work was calling, but I lazily postponed my departure from day to day.
Things at the plantation seemed to have settled into their old routine.
The whereabouts of the bonds was still a mystery, but the ha'nt had returned to his grave--at least, in so far as any manifestations affected the house.

I believe that the "sperrit of de spring-hole" had been seen rising once or twice from a cloud of sulphurous smoke, but the excitement was confined strictly to the negro quarters.