"Truly, Cousin Roger, I love the way we are living," she resumed. "It is very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all Father and Mother labored with me. But it is so! I want to live this way all my life; to be busy, and plan things with Ethan, and make them come true together."

Under cover of the table she put her hand into Vere's, and silence held us a little while. I watched Bagheera the cat, who sat beside my chair staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room.

Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes, a wary readiness in gathered limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now the tail twitched with a lashing movement.

Presently Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled down, composing himself to sleep.

"You like the place, Phil?" I questioned. "You do not find it lonely here, or in any way depressing?"

The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds had visited her.

"Cousin Roger? This darling house? Why?"

I pa.s.sed that question safely, and after a few minutes bade them good-night. They had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together.

As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not deny a growing excitement, or that dread fought with my resolution. Who would keep tryst with me tonight? The Horror or the lady? Both; as each time before? If so, which one would come first, and what might be my measure of success or failure? If some trick were being played upon me, I meant to pluck it out of the mystery.

The quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual. I lighted the lamps and sat down to my work.

The house was still by ten o'clock, all lights out except mine. At midnight I lay down in the dark, the pomander under my pillow. Whether I put the gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd fancy about its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or because I feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night, I should be troubled to answer. I did place it there, and lay lapped in its sweet odor while the moments dragged past; heavy, slow-footed moments of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope uneasy as fear.

The c.o.c.k crowed for the first hour; and for the second. I slept, at last. When I awoke, level sun-rays were striking across the world.

Nothing had happened.

CHAPTER IX

"These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade."--PLUTARCH.

Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of the top or the description.

On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a man who knew everyone and went everywhere!

The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping the young gra.s.s by the roadside.

The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded to me.

"Morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted. "Now let me get the right stuff into this here box, an' I'll sort your family's right out for you. There's a sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill 'em, for Cliff Brown here, that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know but Cliff's poultry'd thank me to leave it be! Up it's got to come, though!"

"Will it make them lay?" I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering into the sack.

"I guess it might, if Cliff told 'em they'd have to lay or eat it, judgin' from the smell that sample's put in my bag."

"Not as sweet as this?" I suggested, and leaned across to lay the pomander in his gnarled hand.

The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation.

"Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?" I asked. "A lady with bright fair hair, colored like copper-bronze?"

"Not I!" he denied briefly.

"No one at all like that--with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold color, and a lot of it?"

"No. Not around here, nor anywhere I've been! What do you call this perfumery, Mr. Locke?"

"I have no idea," I answered, sharply disappointed. "No one knows except the young lady I am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me at all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house who might be the one I am looking for?"

He shook his head, giving back the pomander with marked reluctance.

"No one who might be able to tell more than yourself?" I persisted.

A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr.

Clifford Brown's mailbox and began to sort out my letters.

"Far as that goes, I guess Mis' Hill don't miss much of what goes on around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and she goes drivin' all day. Ain't a house she knows that don't get to hear the whole yarn! You know Mis' Royal Hill? Mis' Vere gets b.u.t.ter and cheese from her. Might ask her!"

I thanked him and drove on.

Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called that morning; inviting me into her parlor to "set," when she had identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest.

"I guessed you must be the new owner up to the Mich.e.l.l place," she observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking crumbs. "Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don't see as that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rampus 'round in that fast automobile of yours! Now, I'm perfectly sound, and I wouldn't be paid to drive the thing. You'd ought to get the other fellow to run it for you; the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, though? Writer, ain't you? Books or newspapers?"

I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack.

"Music?" she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny, takin' your company upstairs to play for 'em. But then it's kind of a funny thing for a man to take to, anyhow! I got a niece ten years old next August who can play piano so good there don't seem anythin'

left to learn her, so----! But there ain't no use of you drivin' 'round here lookin' for a fair-headed girl, Mr. 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 a.s.sured 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 Mich.e.l.l 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 Mich.e.l.l, 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 Mich.e.l.ls 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 in their cells, an' pray, even in the middle of the night, an' shave their heads an' live on a few vegetables an' dry bread."