Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The House
—OF—
Five Gables.
BOOK THE FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
Many years ago there stood on a high bluff over-lookingthe island which is now the site of a portion ofWheeling, West Virginia, a house known far and nearas the house of five gables. It was built of sand-stoneand brick; the gables were of wood; it was not a thingof beauty, and a beholder seeing it for the first time,was sure to pause and exclaim at its rare ugliness, whichenchained the eye; and its quaint irregular shape appealedin a way to one’s feelings, much as a crippled,mishapen being might have done. It had not alwaysbeen thus. It began life as a modest story-and-a-halfcottage, and for several years could only boast of twogables, but with a change of owners there came achange of architecture also, until if old Sir Roger Willing,the original builder, could have risen from hisgrave he would have found it difficult to have discovereda foot of his own handiwork.
Old Sir Roger’s great-grandfather was one of thehundred settlers sent from England by Sir Thomas