is from herself. The little house on the hill fell into the hands of the
chief creditor, who took down the furnace in the south room and offered
the place to rent, but no tenant ever remained there long, either because
of the bleak situation or the want of a garden. There were rumors that the
place was not quite canny. One woman, indeed, went so far as to declare
that she had seen the doctor's figure, dim and unsubstantial, standing
before the fireplace in the twilight, and that once, as she came up the
cellar stairs, something followed her and laid a cold hand on her
shoulder; but as she was a nervous, hysterical person, and moreover was
known to be somewhat given to exaggeration, no one paid much attention to
her tale.

It was certain, however, that there was a great deal of sickness in the
house. One family who rented the place lost three children by fever in one
summer, and it was remarkable that all three seemed to fall under the same
delusion, and insisted that something or some one, coming behind them,
laid upon their shoulders a cold hand. One of them, toward the last, said
that a shadow kept moving to and fro in the room, and kept the sunshine
all away. The woman who had seen the vision of the old doctor became a
widow the next month, and so much sickness and death took place in the
house that at last no one would live there, and it was shut up by its
owner.

In due course of time the father and mother of Sophonisba and Faithful
were laid in Dorchester burial-ground. Mr. T---- had never been a rich man
by any means, and when he died there was little left for the two girls,
even after the sale of the homestead. They did not, however, consider
themselves poor, but with their fifteen hundred dollars in the bank and
their trade of milliner and dressmaker thought themselves very well to do
in the world. Sophonisba, the elder, was at that time a little under