affairs, playing providence, indeed, and both fearing and hating my
role. Looking back, there are a number of things that appear rather
curious. Why, for instance, did Maggie, my old servant, develop
such a dislike for the place? It had nothing to do with the house.
She had not seen it when she first refused to go. But her
reluctance was evident from the beginning.

"I've just got a feeling about it, Miss Agnes," she said. "I can't
explain it, any more than I can explain a cold in the head. But
it's there."

At first I was inclined to blame Maggie's "feeling" on her knowledge
that the house was cheap. She knew it, as she has, I am sure, read
all my letters for years. She has a distrust of a bargain. But later
I came to believe that there was something more to Maggie's distrust
--as though perhaps a wave of uneasiness, spreading from some
unknown source, had engulfed her.

Indeed, looking back over the two months I spent in the Benton house,
I am inclined to go even further. If thoughts carry, as I am sure
they do, then emotions carry. Fear, hope, courage, despair--if the
intention of writing a letter to an absent friend can spread itself
half-way across the earth, so that as you write the friend writes also,
and your letters cross, how much more should big emotions carry? I
have had sweep over me such waves of gladness, such gusts of despair,
as have shaken me. Yet with no cause for either. They are gone in a
moment. Just for an instant, I have caught and made my own another's
joy or grief.

The only inexplicable part of this narrative is that Maggie, neither