ssed by their elders. They might
easily have conceived her to be some baleful fairy intrenched in her
green stronghold, withheld from leaving it by the fear of some dire
penalty for magical sins. Summer and winter, spring and fall, Evelina
Adams never was seen outside her own domain of old mansion-house and
garden, and she had not set her slim lady feet in the public highway
for nearly forty years, if the stories were true.

People differed as to the reason why. Some said she had had an
unfortunate love affair, that her heart had been broken, and she had
taken upon herself a vow of seclusion from the world, but nobody
could point to the unworthy lover who had done her this harm. When
Evelina was a girl, not one of the young men of the village had dared
address her. She had been set apart by birth and training, and also
by a certain exclusiveness of manner, if not of nature. Her father,
old Squire Adams, had been the one man of wealth and college learning
in the village. He had owned the one fine old mansion-house, with its
white front propped on great Corinthian pillars, overlooking the
village like a broad brow of superiority.

He had owned the only coach and four. His wife during her short life
had gone dressed in rich brocades and satins that rustled loud in the
ears of the village women, and her nodding plumes had dazzled the
eyes under their modest hoods. Hardly a woman in the village but
could tell--for it had been handed down like a folk-lore song from
mother to daughter--just what Squire Adams's wife wore when she
walked out first as bride to meeting. She had been clad all in blue.

"Squire Adams's wife, when she walked out bride, she wore a blue
satin brocade gown, all wrought with blue flowers of a darker blue,
cut low neck and short sleeves. She wore long blue silk mitts wrought
with blue, blue satin shoes, and blue silk clocked stockings. And she
wore a blue crape mantle that was brought from over seas, and a blue
velvet hat, with a long blue ostrich feather curled over it--it was
so long it reached her shoulder, and waved when she walked; and she
carried a little blue crape fan with ivory sticks." So the women and
girls told each other when the Squire's bride had been dead nearly
seventy years.

The blue bride attire was said to be still in existence, packed away
in a cedar chest, as the Squire had ordered after his wife's death.
"He stood over the woman that took care of his wife whilst she packed
th