accident of a woman's face worked for destiny.

"I never knew just how it was," she answered slowly as if weighing her
words, "but your uncle wasn't one of our folks, you know. He bought
the place the year before the war broke out, and there was always some
mystery about him and about the life he led--never speaking to anybody
if he could help it, always keeping himself shut up when he could. He
hadn't a good name in these parts, and the house hasn't a good name
either, for the darkies say it is ha'nted and that old Mrs. Jordan--'ole
Miss' they called her--still comes back out of her grave to rebuke the
ha'nt of Mr. Jonathan. There is a path leading from the back porch to
the poplar spring where none of them will go for water after nightfall.
Uncle Abednego swears that he met his old master there one night when he
went down to fill a bucket and that a woman was with him. It all comes,
I reckon, of Mr. Jonathan having been found dead at the spring, and you
know how the darkies catch onto any silly fancy about the dead walking.
I don't believe much in ha'nts myself, though great-grandma has seen
many a one in her day, and all the servants at Jordan's Journey will
never rest quiet. I've always wondered if your mother and Miss Kesiah
were ever frightened by the stories the darkies tell?" For a moment she
paused, and then added softly, "It was all so different, they say, when
the Jordans were living."

Again the phrase which had begun to irritate him! Who were these dead
and gone Jordans whose beneficent memory still inhabited the house they
had built?

"I don't think my mother would care for such stories," he replied after
a minute. "She has never mentioned them in her letters."