And you brought up in the Glen . Well , wait a minute till I get by breath all back and I 'll tell you . '' Walter shivered delightsomely . He loved ghost stories . Their mystery , their dramatic climaxes , their eeriness gave him a fearful , exquisite pleasure . Longfellow instantly grew tame and commonplace . He threw the book aside and stretched himself out , propped upon his elbows to listen whole-heartedly , fixing his great luminous eyes on Mary 's face . Mary wished he would n't look at her so . She felt she could make a better job of the ghost story if Walter were not looking at her . She could put on several frills and invent a few artistic details to enhance the horror . As it was , she had to stick to the bare truth -- or what had been told her for the truth . `` Well , '' she began , `` you know old Tom Bailey and his wife used to live in that house up there thirty years ago . He was an awful old rip , they say , and his wife was n't much better . They 'd no children of their own , but a sister of old Tom 's died and left a little boy -- this Henry Warren -- and they took him . He was about twelve when he came to them , and kind of undersized and delicate . They say Tom and his wife used him awful from the start -- whipped him and starved him . Folks said they wanted him to die so 's they could get the little bit of money his mother had left for him . Henry did n't die right off , but he begun having fits -- epileps , they called 'em -- and he grew up kind of simple , till he was about eighteen . His uncle used to thrash him in that garden up there 'cause it was back of the house where no one could see him . But folks could hear , and they say it was awful sometimes hearing poor Henry plead with his uncle not to kill him .
But nobody dared interfere 'cause old Tom was such a reprobate he 'd have been sure to get square XXXXX 'em some way .
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