"old Crane place." It had never been painted, it was shedding its
flapping gray shingles like gray scales, the roof sagged in a mossy
hollow before the chimney, the windows and doors were awry, and the
whole house was full of undulations and wavering lines, which gave it
a curiously unreal look in broad daylight. In the moonlight it was
the shadowy edifice built of a dream.

As Sylvia and Charlotte came to the front door it seemed as if they
might fairly walk through it as through a gray shadow; but Sylvia
stooped, and her shoulders strained with seemingly incongruous force,
as if she were spending it to roll away a shadow. On the flat
doorstep lay a large round stone, pushed close against the door.
There were no locks and keys in the old Crane place; only bolts.
Sylvia could not fasten the doors on the inside when she went away,
so she adopted this expedient, which had been regarded with favor by
her mother and grandmother before her, and illustrated natures full
of gentle fallacies which went far to make existence comfortable.

Always on leaving the house alone the Crane women had bolted the side
door, which was the one in common use, gone out the front one, and
laboriously rolled this same round stone before it. Sylvia reasoned
as her mother and grandmother before her, with the same simplicity:
"When the stone's in front of the door, folks must know there ain't
anybody to home, because they couldn't put it there if they was."

And when some neighbor had argued that the evil-disposed might roll
away the stone and enter at will, Sylvia had replied, with the
innocent conservatism with which she settled an argument, "Nobody
ever did."