I passed the remainder of our journey in a condition of extreme unease, while, trotting alongside me, the voluble frontiersman poured out a torrent of his extravagant—and seemingly inexhaustible—narratives. Though apparently intended as high-spirited divertissements, these tales—involving his savage encounters with Indians, panthers, alligators, wolves, and monstrously proportioned members of the ursine family—had the very opposite effect, serving not to mitigate but rather to exacerbate my already acute state of nervous irritation.

It might be supposed, then, that—as we emerged from a dense grove of pines in the late afternoon and caught sight of our destination directly before us—I would have responded with a sense of the keenest gratitude and relief. Such, however, was not the case. I know not how it was, but at my very first glimpse of the venerable Asher manse, my heart was suffused with the most profound and insufferable gloom!

What was it, I wondered—as our horses approached the dark, looming edifice—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Asher? For—aside from a general air of dilapidation and neglect—there was nothing which I could immediately perceive about the building to account for its grim—its sorrowful—its singularly oppressive—effect upon my soul.

As the frontiersman and I reined our steeds to a halt before the massive front door, I looked upon the external features of the building—upon the bleak, discolored walls—upon the vacant, eye-like windows—upon the minute fungi that hung in a tangled webwork from the eaves—with an utter depression of spirit that I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium. The mere sight of the building filled my soul with an indescribably disquieting sensation—a species of intense nervous agitation bordering on dread!

“Mossy-lookin’ ol’ place, ain’t it?” said Crockett, dismounting from his steed and lashing the reins to a once-ornate but now badly corroded hitching post. Gazing up at the building with a look of disapprobation, he shook his head and muttered, “Why, if I was to live in such grandiferous style, I reckon I’d take a heap better care o’ my diggin’s than these-here Asher folks!”

As I climbed down from my steed and led it to the hitching post, Crockett approached the front door. “What in tarnation—?” I heard him exclaim. Stepping to his side, I saw that his attention was riveted on the heavy, iron knocker affixed to the center of the door. This object was of a most singular design, wrought into the shape of a rearing centaur whose brutish face wore an expression of utter, wanton carnality. Clutched in the creature’s arms was a swooning maiden, garbed in such an exceedingly immodest fashion that—I blush to pen the words—the contours of her bosom were revealed in the most flagrant manner imaginable!