“I saw what I saw, and I know I saw it, and I will swear on my death bed that I saw it.  I saw Luella Miller and Erastus Miller, and Lily, and Aunt Abby, and Maria, and the Doctor, and Sarah, all goin’ out of her door, and all but Luella shone white in the moonlight, and they were all helpin’ her along till she seemed to fairly fly in the midst of them.  Then it all disappeared.  I stood a minute with my heart poundin’, then I went over there.  I thought of goin’ for Mrs. Babbit, but I thought she’d be afraid.  So I went alone, though I knew what had happened.  Luella was layin’ real peaceful, dead on her bed.”

This was the story that the old woman, Lydia Anderson, told, but the sequel was told by the people who survived her, and this is the tale which has become folklore in the village.

Lydia Anderson died when she was eighty-seven.  She had continued wonderfully hale and hearty for one of her years until about two weeks before her death.

One bright moonlight evening she was sitting beside a window in her parlour when she made a sudden exclamation, and was out of the house and across the street before the neighbour who was taking care of her could stop her.  She followed as fast as possible and found Lydia Anderson stretched on the ground before the door of Luella Miller’s deserted house, and she was quite dead.

The next night there was a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground.  Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered emblematic of Luella herself.

THE SOUTHWEST CHAMBER

“That school-teacher from Acton is coming to-day,” said the elder Miss Gill, Sophia.

“So she is,” assented the younger Miss Gill, Amanda.

“I have decided to put her in the southwest chamber,” said Sophia.

Amanda looked at her sister with an expression of mingled doubt and terror.  “You don’t suppose she would—­” she began hesitatingly.

“Would what?” demanded Sophia, sharply.  She was more incisive than her sister.  Both were below the medium height, and stout, but Sophia was firm where Amanda was flabby.  Amanda wore a baggy old muslin (it was a hot day), and Sophia was uncompromisingly hooked up in a starched and boned cambric over her high shelving figure.

“I didn’t know but she would object to sleeping in that room, as long as Aunt Harriet died there such a little time ago,” faltered Amanda.

“Well!” said Sophia, “of all the silly notions!  If you are going to pick out rooms in this house where nobody has died, for the boarders, you’ll have your hands full.  Grandfather Ackley had seven children; four of them died here to my certain knowledge, besides grandfather and grandmother.  I think Great-grandmother Ackley, grandfather’s mother, died here, too; she must have; and Great-grandfather Ackley, and grandfather’s unmarried sister, Great-aunt Fanny Ackley.  I don’t believe there’s a room nor a bed in this house that somebody hasn’t passed away in.”