As one approaches the bridge crossing the little stream which cuts the village in two, there is at the left on the bank of the stream a large three-story stone dwelling.  Eighty years ago the first story of this dwelling was occupied as a store; the third story was the Masonic lodge-room, and no doubt the events leading up to the disappearance of Morgan were warmly discussed within the four walls of this old building.  Across from the three-story stone building is a brick house set well back from the highway, surrounded by shrubbery, and approached by a gravel walk bordered by old-fashioned boxwood hedges.  This house was built in 1812, and is still well preserved.  For many years it was a quite famous private school for young ladies, kept by a Mr. Radcliffe.

Across the little bridge on the right is a low stone building now used as a blacksmith shop, but which eighty years ago was a dwelling.  A little farther on the opposite side of the street is the old stage tavern, still kept as a tavern, and to-day in substantially the same condition inside and out as it was seventy-five years ago.  It is now only a roadside inn, but before railroads were, through stages from Buffalo, Albany, and New York stopped here.  A charming old lady living just opposite, said,—­

“I have sat on this porch many a day and watched the stages and private coaches come rattling up with horn and whip and carrying the most famous people in the country,—­all stopped there just across the road at that old red tavern; those were gay days; I shall never see the like again; but perhaps you may, for now coaches like yours stop at the old tavern almost every day.”

The ballroom of the tavern remains exactly as it was,—­a fireplace at one end filled with ashes of burnt-out revelries, a little railing at one side where the fiddlers sat, the old benches along the side,—­all remind one of the gayeties of long ago.

In connection with the Morgan mystery the village of Stafford is interesting, because the old tavern and the three-story stone building are probably the only buildings still standing which were identified with the events leading up to the disappearance of Morgan.  The other towns, like Batavia and Canandaigua, have grown and changed, so that the old buildings have long since made way for modern.  One of the last to go was the old jail at Canandaigua where Morgan was confined and from which he was taken.  When that old jail was torn down some years ago, people carried away pieces of his cell as souvenirs of a mystery still fascinating because still a mystery.

As we came out of the old tavern there were a number of men gathered about the machine, looking at it.  I asked them some questions about the village, and happened to say,—­

“I once knew a man who, seventy-five years ago, lived in that little stone building by the bridge.”

“That was in Morgan’s time,” said an old man, and every one in the crowd turned instantly from the automobile to look at me.