that path, you will find, here and there under foot, ancient bricks which came—if you can believe the negroes who live near by—from the roof of the secret tunnel. And there is another thing that you are likely to see as you walk that abandoned promenade above the old underground passage on a late afternoon in summer when the nighthawks are already flying and perhaps the big swamp owls are hooting dismally in the distant woods. You may see, ahead of you, spanning the path and shimmering like a golden disc in the late light, the huge, wheel-like silken web of the great golden spider.
In all that country there is no other creature so horrible to look upon. It is as large as the palm of a man's hand—a golden-speckled, hairy monster, barred and spotted with black and dark brown, as hideous as its silken house is beautiful. It inhabits the forests of lowland Carolina within a few miles of the sea, but it is very rare except in certain localities, so that many have never seen it, and consider it a myth.
It is no myth, however, as you are likely to discover if you will search the tangled shrubbery around the ruins of Stanwicke Hall. There the golden spider still spins its glistening golden webs, three feet or more in diameter, and the negroes know it well and fear it as they fear the rattlesnake. But if you ask them to tell you the story of the man who once lived in Stanwicke Hall and whose black slaves called him (behind his back) the Golden Spider, because of his
