the empty house, till my husband and I got
here. We were married in Rome, and made the long trip here without
stopping at all. It was dawn, a June morning, when we arrived. We walked
all the way from the station at Ashley out to the old house, here at
Crittenden's. And . . . I'll never forget the astounded expression on my
husband's face when Toucle rose up out of the long grass in the front
yard and bade me welcome. She'd known me as a little girl when I used to
visit here. She will outlive all of us, Toucle will, and be watching
from her room in the woodshed chamber on the dawn of Judgment Day when
the stars begin to fall."

Mr. Welles felt a trifle bewildered by this, and showed it. She
explained further, "But seriously, I must tell you that she is a
perfectly harmless and quite uninteresting old herb-gatherer, although
the children in the village are a little afraid of her, because she is
an Indian, the only one they have ever seen. She really _is_ an Indian
too. She knows every inch of our valley and the mountains better than
any lumberman or hunter or fisherman in Ashley. She often goes off and
doesn't come back for days. I haven't the least idea where she stays.
But she's very good to our children when she's here, and I like her
capacity for monumental silence. It gives her very occasional remarks an
oracular air, even though you know it's only because she doesn't often
open her lips. She helps a little with the house-work, too, although she
always looks so absent-minded, as though she were thinking of something
very far away. She's quite capable of preparing a good meal, for all she
never seems to notice what she's up to. And she's the last member of our
family except the very coming-and-going little maids I get once in a
while. Ashley is unlike the rest of the world in that it is hard to get
domestic servants here.

"Now let me see, whom next to introduce to you. You know all your
immediate neighbors now. I shall have to begin on Ashley itself. Perhaps
our minister and his wife. They live in the high-porticoed,
tall-pillared white old house next door to the church in the village, on
the opposite side from the church-yard. They are Ashleyans of the oldest
rock. Both of them were born here, and have always lived here. Mr.
Bayweather is seventy-five years old and has never had any other parish.
I do believe the very best thing I can do for you is to send you
straight to them, this minute. There's nothing Mr. Bay