h may have been quite true!

On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs. Hill to add to our
supply of eggs, Phillida's hens having unaccountably failed to supply
their quota. I went in, leaving my companion in the car.

No one else was in the shop. An impulse prompted me to put a question to
the little woman whose life had been spent in this neighborhood.

"Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of anyone named Desire Michell?" I asked.

She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me. Her sallow, wrinkled
face lightened with curiosity and an absurd primness.

"Now, Mr. Locke! I'd like to know where a young city feller like you got
that old story from?"

"I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me. She was a witch?"

"She was a hussy," said Mrs. Hill severely. "I was a little girl when
she ran away from her father's respectable house, fifty-odd years ago.
The disgrace killed him, being a clergyman. An' the gossip that came
back, later, an' pictures of her in such dresses! Dear! Dear! The wicked
certainly have opportunities."

"Fifty years ago!" I echoed, dazed by this intrusion of a third Desire
Michell.

"Ah! Nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive today; which she ain't.
Why, she changed her name to one fancier that you might have heard talk
of? She was----"

The name she gave me I shall not set down. It is enough to say it was
that of a super-woman whose beauty, genius and absolute lack of
conscience set Europe ablaze for a while. A torch of womanhood, quenched
at the highest-burning hour of her career by a sudden and violent death.

"There was an older house once, on your place," she added pensively.
"Did you know that? It stood in the hollow where your lake is now.
Two--three hundred years old, folks say it was. One night it burned down
in a big thunderstorm. The Michells then living had your house built
over by the orchard, then, an' had a dam built across so as to cover up
the old site with water. All the Michells lived there till the last one
went missionary abroad an' died in foreign parts. I mean the hussy's
brother. He took up his father's work, feelin' a strong call. He was
only a young boy when his sister went off, but he felt it dreadful. He
was a hard man on the sinner. Preached hell and damnation all his days,
he did. Lean over the pulpit, he would, his eyes flamin' fire an' his
tongue shrivellin' folks in their pews, I can tell you!"

"He left children?" I asked.

"No, sir! Rev'rund never m