for flying over her fences without permission, and setting the saved
by the ears in general, she would have done so and felt that heaven
was almost as desirable a place as South Carolina. But as even she
couldn't impose her will upon the next world, and there was nobody
in this one she hated less than she did me--possibly because she had
never laid eyes on me--she willed me Hynds House and what was left
of the Hynds fortune; tying this string to her bequest: I must
occupy Hynds House within six months, and I couldn't rent it, or
attempt to sell it, without forfeiture of the entire estate.

I can fancy the ancient beldam sniggering sardonically the while she
figured to herself the chagrined astonishment, the helpless wrath,
of her watchfully waiting neighbors, when they should discover that
historic Hynds House, dating from the beginning of things
Carolinian, had passed into the unpedigreed hands of a woman named
Smith. I can fancy her balefully exact perception of the attitude so
radically conservative a community must needs assume toward such an
intruder as myself, foisted upon it, so to speak, by an enemy who
never failed to turn the trick.

Because I'm not a Hynds, at all. Great Aunt Sophronisba was my aunt
not by blood but by marriage; she having, when she was no longer
what is known as a spring chicken, met my Great-Uncle Johnny
Scarlett and scandalized all Hyndsville by marrying him out of hand.

I have heard that she was insanely in love with him, and I believe
it; nothing short of an over-mastering passion could have induced
one of the haughty Hyndses to marry a person with such family
connections as his. For my father, George Smith, was a ruddy
English ship-chandler who pitched upon Boston for a home, and lived