up the street towards
this square, and to the somewhat old-fashioned mansion opposite the
meeting-house. On one side of the square was a small dwelling, occupied
by several distant relatives of ours; Aunt Midkiff (Metcalf), Aunt
Foggison (Ferguson, so called), and her sister, Miss Samples (Mrs.
Semple), with the daughter of our Aunt Foggison, Mrs. Lane, and her only
child. You remember, sister," addressing my mother, "that you have told
me, that one night, after you had gone to bed, your lamented husband
stood at the window looking up the street towards the old house above, of
which he had a complete view. Upon your asking what detained him, he
called you up, and it was evident to you both that one chamber of the
house was in a light blaze. Persons appeared to be moving rapidly around
it, and, as it were, pulling down the curtains of the bed, which looked
as if on fire. After a little time the appearance gradually ceased, and
your husband remarking that he would inquire in the morning of his
neighbor, a highly respectable lawyer, who occupied the house, what was
the cause of the extraordinary spectacle of the night before, he also
retired. But upon putting the question to his acquaintance on the
following morning, he seemed astonished, and utterly denied that anything
unusual had taken place in the chamber, which was the one occupied by
himself and his wife, or that they had been at all disturbed during the
night.

"Now all this," continued my uncle, "is quite consistent with the
supposition, that this gentleman may have had some secret motive for
concealing the fact of a threatened conflagration, pretty sure, if
known, to become the town talk and perhaps to expose him to inconvenient
inquiries; and though a strictly moral and religious man, he may have
thought that the circumstances warranted a direct denial of the matter,
seeing it was, as it turned out, an affair of purely domestic concern."

My mother, I thought, looked at my uncle a little anxiously, and seemed
about to make a movement for our departure; but we urged him to tell us
to what strange thing he had referred, and why he had so particularly
described the situation and characteristics of this square, as if there
were something more in relation to it which it might interest us to know;
for you may be sure our mother had never mentioned to us children
anything likely to alarm us.

"I am afraid," said he, at last "that something, which really did happen
in