. Locke. The Slav folk down in
the shanties by the post road are about the only light-complected ones
in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to plain brown. Senator
Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boardin' school for
vacation. How do you like your place?"

"Very much," I assured her. "Only, I do not know a great deal about it,
yet. Its history, I mean. Are there any interesting stories about the
house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost story to
tell our friends when they come to visit us."

She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking-chair, arms folded
on her meagre breast.

"Guess you'll have to make one up! I never heard of none. The Michell
family always owned it--and they were so stiff respectable an' upright
everyone was scared of 'em! Most of the men were clergymen in their
time. The last, Reverend Cotton Mather Michell, went abroad to foreign
parts for missionary work with the heathen, twenty-odd years ago; an'
died there. He never married, so the family's run out. The Michells were
awful hard on women; called 'em vessels of wrath an' beguilers of Adam.
Preached it right out of the pulpit--so I guess no girl in these parts
could have been hired to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died
when he was born, so he'd had no softenin' influence. After news came of
his death, the house was shut up 'till you bought it. My, how you've
changed it, already! I'd admire to go through it."

When I had invited her to call on Phillida and inspect our domicile, and
paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the
car.

"All this land 'round here is old and full of Indian relics," she
remarked. "Over to the Sound where the swamps used to be, there was lots
of fightin' with savages. An' they say a witch was stoned to death where
the Catholic convent stands now, on the road up above your place. So I
guess you can figure out a story to tell your company, if you like."

"A convent?" I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. "Do
they, perhaps, have visitors there, ladies in retreat for a time, as
convents often do abroad?"

Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly-combed head.

"No hope of your girl there," she chuckled. "They're the strictest
sisterhood in America, folks say. Poor Clares, I think they're called.
No one, not even their relations, ever see their faces after they join.
They're not allowed to talk to each other, even. Just stay