Still higher and farther west
lay the accursed ledge,--shunned by all, unless it were now and then a
daring youth, or a wandering naturalist who ventured to its edge in the
hope of securing some infantile _Crotalus durissus_, who had not yet
cut his poison-teeth.
Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Honorable Thomas Dudley,
Esquire, a man of note and name and great resources, allied by descent
to the family of "Tom Dudley," as the early Governor is sometimes
irreverently called by our most venerable, but still youthful
antiquary,--and to the other public Dudleys, of course,--of all of whom
he made small account, as being himself an English gentleman, with
little taste for the splendors of provincial office,--early in the last
century, Thomas Dudley had built this mansion. For several generations
it had been dwelt in by descendants of the same name, but soon after
the Revolution it passed by marriage into the hands of the Venners, by
whom it had ever since been held and tenanted.
As the Doctor turned an angle in the road, all at once the stately old
house rose before him. It was a skilfully managed effect, as it well
might be, for it was no vulgar English architect who had planned the
mansion and arranged its position and approach.
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