THE MYSTERY OF HADDON'S FERRY.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 206, 4 June 1887, Page 7

THE MYSTERY OF HADDON'S FERRY.

[The opening chapter of this romantic story appeared in our supplement of Saturday last. For the beneiit of those who missed it wo may say that the scene is laid at a ferry on the Wilde river, at the junction of the mountain torrents the Hurry and the Whirl in the Alleghanies. Gabriel Haddon, a handsome - looking old man of sixty years of age, was the owner of the ferry farm and keeper of the ferry. He lived in the ferry cottage with his granddaughter Gertrude, a girl of fifteen, and an old negress named Jessie Bell. Some mystery hung over the old nine's life, and various opinions were held of him in the neighbourhood. Some considered him a learned philosopher ; others believed him to be a seer and a prophet, while a third class set him down as it mild sort of a lunatic. The story opens on a dark, sultry night in midwinter, which culminated in a terrible thunderstorm. The old negress had gone to spend the night with a neighbour, and the old man, in her absence, had ju.st begun to tell Ins granddaughter the story of their lives when "a negro named Saturn, frora a plantation up the mountains, owned by General Slaughter, came dashing through the storm to summon the old ferryman to the deathbed of his master the General, between whom and the old ferryman there had been some mysterious but deepseated and insatiable feud. Gabriel Haddon at first demurred leaving his nurse alone on such a night, but being assured that the General could not live through the night and that he had something of the utmost importance to communicate, the ferryman agreed to go, and his story \\ as thus interrupted in its opening sentences. After his departure, the cry of " Boat " came across the river, and being repeated with great impatience, Gertrude, who was expert with the oars and had often done similar service in the absence of her grandfather, 1 evolved to go, despite the fctorminesb of the night. She had just reached the other side of the liver. Chapter 11. now continues the narrative.]