parlor as
commands, no less, and had taken the long carriage-ride from the city
with complacency. And now Miss Emily, last of the family, had begged me
to take the house.

In the end, as has been shown, I agreed. The glamor of the past had
perhaps something to do with it. But I have come to a time of life when,
failing intimate interests of my own, my neighbors' interests are mine
by adoption. To be frank, I came because I was curious. Why, aside from
a money consideration, was the Benton house to be occupied by an alien
household? It was opposed to every tradition of the family as I had
heard of it.

I knew something of the family history: the Reverend Thaddeus Benton,
rector of Saint Bartholomew, who had forsaken the frame rectory near the
church to build himself the substantial home now being offered me; Miss
Emily, his daughter, who must now, I computed, be nearly seventy; and a
son whom I recalled faintly as hardly bearing out the Benton traditions
of solidity and rectitude.

The Reverend Mr. Benton, I recalled, had taken the stand that his house
was his own, and having moved his family into it, had thereafter, save
on great occasions, received the congregation individually or en masse,
in his study at the church. A patriarchal old man, benevolent yet
austere, who once, according to a story I had heard in my girlhood, had
horsewhipped one of his vestrymen for trifling with the affections of a
young married woman in the village!

There was a gap of thirty years in my knowledge of the family. I had,
indeed, forgotten its very existence, when by the chance of a newspaper
advertisement I found myself involved vitally in its affairs, playing
providence, indeed, and both fearing and hating my role. Looking back,
there are a number of things that appear rather curious. Why, for
instance, did Maggie, my old servant, develop such a dislike for the
place? It had nothing to do with the house. She had not seen it when she
first refused to go. But her reluctance was evident from the beginning.

"I've just got a feeling about it, Miss Agnes," she said. "I can't
explain it, any more than I can explain a cold in the head. But it's
there."

At first I was inclined to blame Maggie's "feeling" on her knowledge
that the house was cheap. She knew it, as she has, I am sure, read all
my letters for years. She has a distrust of a bargain. But later I came
to believe that there was something more to Maggie's distrust--as though
pe