Oldtower stands in a wild and beautiful village, left on one side by
modern travel, which has turned away from the turnpike of the fathers to
follow the more direct route of the rail. The estate extends for some
distance along the bank of the river, which so twists in its windings
as almost to make the village an island, and on a knoll overlooking
the stream moulders the crumbling pile of stone which once was a
watch-tower, and from which the place takes its name.
The house is one of the finest of old colonial mansions, and is
beautifully placed upon a terrace half a dozen feet above the level of
the ample lawn which surrounds it. Back of the house a trim garden with
box hedges as high as the gardener's knee extends down to the river,
while in front a lofty hedge shuts off the grounds from the village
street. Miss Fanny, upon whom had largely devolved the care of the
estate since the death of her widowed mother, had had the good sense
to confine her efforts to keeping things in good order in the simplest
possible way; and the result was that such defects of management as were
rendered inevitable by the smallness in income presented themselves to
the eye rather as evidences of mellowness than of decay, and the general
effect remained most charming.
Irene had always been fond of the McHugh place, and everything was in
the perfection of its June fairness when she arrived. Her meeting with
Fanny was properly effusive, while Arthur gratified her feminine sense
by greeting her with outward calmness while he allowed his old passion
to appear in his eyes. There were, of course, innumerable questions to
be asked, as is usual upon such occasions, and some of them were even of
sufficient importance to require answers; so that the afternoon passed
rapidly away, and Irene had no opportunity to refer to the favor to
which her friend's letter had made allusion. Her suspicion that she had
been summoned in her capacity of ghost-seer was confirmed by the fact
that she had been put in the haunted room, a fine square chamber in the
southeast wing, wainscoted to the ceiling, and one of the handsomest
apartments in the house. This room had been especially decorated and
fitted up for one Major Arthur McHugh, a great-great-uncle of the
present McHughs, who had served with honor under Lafayette in the
Revolution. The major had left behind him the reputation of great
personal bravery, a portrait which showed him as extremely handsome,
and the fame of having been a great lady-killer and something of a rake
withal; while he had taken out of the world with him, or at least had
not left behind, the secret of what he had done with the famous McHugh
diamonds. Major McHugh was his father's eldest son, and in the family
the law of primogeniture was in his day pretty strictly observed, so
that to him descended the estate. A disappointment in love resulted in
his refusing to marry, although urged thereto by his family and much
reasoned with by disinterested mothers with marriageable daughters. He
bequeathed the estate to the eldest son of his younger brother, who had
been named for him, and this Arthur McHugh was the grandfather of the
present lieutenant.
With the estate went the famous McHugh diamonds, at that time the finest
in America. The "McHugh star," a huge stone of rose cut, had once been
the eye of an idol in the temple of Majarah, whence it had been stolen
by the sacrilegious Rajah of Zinyt, from whose possession it passed into
the hands of a Colonel McHugh at the siege of Zinyt in 1707. There was
an effort made, about the middle of the eighteenth century, to add this
beautiful gem to the crown jewels of France, but the McHugh then at the
head of the family, the father of Major McHugh, declared that he would
sooner part with wife and children than with the "McHugh star," an
unchristian sentiment, which speaks better for his appreciation of
jewels than for his family affection.
When Major McHugh departed from this life, in 1787, the McHugh diamonds
were naturally sought for by his heir, but were nowhere to be found.
None of the family knew where they were usually kept--a circumstance
which was really less singular than it might at first appear, since the
major was never communicative, and in those days concealment was more
relied upon for the safety of small valuables than the strength which
the modern safe, with its misleading name, is supposed to supply. The
last that was known of the gems was their being worn at a ball in 1785
by the sister-in-law of the owner, to whom they had been loaned for the
occasion. Here they had attracted the greatest attention and admiration,
but on their return to Major McHugh they seemed to vanish forever.
Search had of course been made, and one generation after another,
hearing the traditions, and believing in its own cleverness, had
renewed the endeavor, but thus far the mystery had remained unsolved.