Ebook The Hidden Hand

Hurricane Hall is a large old family mansion, built of dark, red sandstone, in one of the loneliest and wildest of the mountain regions of Virginia. The estate is surrounded on three sides by a range of steep, gray rocks, spiked with clumps of dark evergreens, and called, from its horseshoe form, the Devil's Hoof. On the fourth side the ground gradually descends in broken rock and barren soil to the edge of the wild mountain stream known as the Devil's Run. When storms and ?oods were high, the loud roaring of the wild mountain gorges, and the terrific raging of the torrent over its rocky course, gave to this savage locality its ill-omened names of Devil's Hoof, Devil's Run and Hurricane Hall.