Read Online God's Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher - Free Book Online

free and fallen onto the lawn below or shattered on the flagstone walk. The copper horse on the carriage shed had acquired a sickly verdigris patina, as if it had become nauseated from its own air of perpetual motion.
    It was said that the manse contained a secret chamber, where Miss Hark’s father had hidden fugitive slaves before smuggling them across the border to Canada. Some Commoners swore that they’d heard snatches of old spirituals coming from the front parlor late at night, accompanied by the wheezing strains of the ancient pump organ that had belonged to James’s widow.
    While Prof sorted through a ring of iron keys, Jim tugged on the sleigh bells. Prof gave a start. “Jesum Crow!” he said.
    Jim struggled not to laugh out loud. Evidently Prof was as frightened of the manse as he was. The vestibule and front hallway smelled cold and stale, like a disused church. A curved staircase led to the second story. Prof laid his hand on one of the carved balusters. “Butternut,” he said. “You don’t see much butternut being used in houses these days, Jimmy. This house was built. ”
    He poked his head into the front parlor off the hall. “And just look at this wainscoting. Bird’s-eye maple all the way up to the chair rail. I played here with Harkness as a kid. I never would have noticed how pretty the woodwork was then.”
    â€œAre you going to move in?”
    â€œI’ll have to have someplace to hang my fish pole after I retire,” Prof said. “The headmaster’s house goes with the job.”
    â€œI wouldn’t live in a haunted house for a million dollars,” Jim said.
    Prof grinned. He touched one bushy eyebrow, then his lips, then made a circle of his thumb and forefinger: their private code for “I say nothing.”
    â€œTruth to tell,” Prof said, “I’ve never thought it was the house that was haunted.”
    There wasn’t much to see in the parlor. A horsehair love seat with yellowed antimacassars on its arms and back. Two uncomfortable-looking Morris chairs. The antiquated organ rumored to play itself. A glass-fronted bookcase containing old-fashioned romance novels from the era of Jim’s grandparents and great-grandparents. “I don’t think this room has been used since the manse was a boardinghouse, Jim,” Prof said.
    â€œI didn’t know it ever was a boardinghouse.”
    â€œOh, yes, and within my memory. After Abolition Jim was killed by federal troops and the Kingdom was reincorporated into the nation, James’s widow operated a very respectable boardinghouse here, mainly for traveling single ladies and old-maid schoolteachers and such. She willed the place to her grown granddaughter Harkness—speaking of old-maid schoolteachers. Miss H continued to run the boardinghouse for a few years after she inherited it. Then she got her normal-school degree and started working at the Academy. That’s about when the boarding business went by the board. Sorry for the bad pun.”
    They returned to the hallway, which led into a dining room. A trestle-style table with twelve ladder-back chairs arranged around it took up most of the space in the room.
    Out in the ell, the pale-yellow kitchen linoleum gleamed from a recent waxing. Next to the deep-welled zinc sink sat an icebox, as Prof referred to it, with a squat round motor on top. It was unplugged and the door was ajar. Except for an open box of baking soda, the shelves were bare. A massive black Home Comfort cooking and heating stove, converted at some point from wood to gas, sat between the empty icebox and the door to the woodshed. Off the kitchen was a narrow bathroom, formerly a pantry, Prof thought, containing a toilet with a pull-chain attached to an overhead water tank, and a tub with high sides resting on lion-claw feet.
    Another door led from the kitchen to a downstairs bedroom. Prof told Jim that he believed that Miss Hark had