they
can be."

"I heard the little negro boy talking of Miss Hallie," said Helen.
"Pray, who is she?"

Mrs. Haley closed her eyes, threw her head back, and laughed softly.

"The poor child!" she exclaimed. "I declare, I feel like cryin' every
time I think about her. She's the forlornest poor creetur the Lord ever
let live, and one of the best. Sometimes, when I git tore up in my mind,
and begin to think that everything's wrong-end foremost, I jess think
of Hallie Garwood, and then I don't have no more trouble."

Both Helen and her aunt appeared to be interested, and Mrs. Haley went
on:

"The poor child was a Herndon; I reckon you've heard tell of the
Virginia Herndons. At the beginning of the war, she was married to Ethel
Garwood; and, bless your life, she hadn't been married more'n a week
before Ethel was killed. 'Twa'n't in no battle, but jess in a kind of
skirmish. They fotch him home, and Hallie come along with him, and right
here she's been ev'ry sence. She does mighty quare. She don't wear
nothin' but black, and she don't go nowhere less'n it's somewheres where
there's sickness. It makes my blood run cold to think about that poor
creetur. Trouble hits some folks and glances off, and it hits some and
thar it sticks. I tell you what, them that it gives the go-by ought to
be monst'ous proud."

This was the beginning of many interesting experiences for Helen and her
aunt. They managed to find considerable comfort in Mrs. Haley's genial
gossip. It amused and instructed them, and, at the same time, gave them
a standard, half-serious, half-comical, by which to measure their own
experiences in what seemed to them a very quaint neighborhood. They
managed, in the course of a very few days, to make themselves thoroughly
at home in their new surroundings; and, while they missed much that
tradition and literature had told them they would find, they found much
to excite their curiosity and attract their interest.

One morning, an old-fashioned carriage, drawn by a pair of heavy-limbed
horses, lumbered up to the tavern door. Helen watched it with some
degree of expectancy. The curtains and upholstering were faded and worn,
and the panels were dingy with age. The negro driver was old and
obsequious. He jumped from his high seat, opened the door, let down a
flight of steps, and then stood with his hat off, the November sun
glistening on his bald head. Two ladies alighted. One was old, and one
was young, but both were arr