nd
she never has gone away; it was in an awful storm she come, I've
heard, and she looked just the same as she does now. There! I can't
tell half the stories I've heard, and Deborah she most took my head
off," said Martha, "because, when I first came, I was asking about
her; and she said it was a sin to gossip about a harmless old creature
whose mind was broke, but I guess most everybody thinks there's
something mysterious. There's my grandmother--grandmother her mind is
failing her; but she never had such ways! And then those clothes that
my lady in the gable wears: they're unearthly looking; and I heard a
woman say once, that they come out of a chest in the big garret, and
they belonged to a Mistress Haverford who was hung for a witch, but
there's no knowing that there is any truth in it." And Martha would
have gone on with her stories, if just then we had not heard cousin
Agnes's step on the stairway, and I hurried into bed.

But my bright eyes and excited look betrayed me. Cousin Agnes said she
had hoped I would be asleep. And Martha said perhaps it was her fault;
but I seemed wakeful, and she had talked with me a bit, to keep my
spirits up, coming to a new, strange place. The apology was accepted,
but Martha evidently had orders before I next saw her; for I never
could get her to discuss Lady Ferry again; and she carefully told me
that she should not have told those foolish stories, which were not
true: but I knew that she still had her thoughts and suspicions as
well as I. Once, when I asked her if Lady Ferry were Madam's real
name, she answered with a guilty flush, "That's what the folks
hereabout called her, because they didn't know any other at first."
And this to me was another mystery. It was strongly impressed upon my
mind that I must ask no questions, and that Madam was not to be
discussed. No one distinctly forbade this; but I felt that it would
not do. In every other way I was sure that I was allowed perfect
liberty, so I soon ceased to puzzle myself or other people, and
accepted Madam's presence as being perfectly explainable and
natural,--just as the rest of the household did,--except once in a
while something would set me at work romancing and wondering; and I
read some stories in one of the books in the library,--of Peter Rugg
the missing man, whom one may always meet riding from Salem to Boston
in every storm, and of the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew, and
some terrible German stories of doom