No vagrant, if he heard
the tale, would seek shelter beneath that old roof, unhallowed by
nearly half a century of superstitious fear.
There was only one person in the village who had actually known
Luella Miller. That person was a woman well over eighty, but a
marvel of vitality and unextinct youth. Straight as an arrow, with
the spring of one recently let loose from the bow of life, she
moved about the streets, and she always went to church, rain or
shine. She had never married, and had lived alone for years in a
house across the road from Luella Miller's.
This woman had none of the garrulousness of age, but never in all
her life had she ever held her tongue for any will save her own,
and she never spared the truth when she essayed to present it. She
it was who bore testimony to the life, evil, though possibly
wittingly or designedly so, of Luella Miller, and to her personal
appearance. When this old woman spoke--and she had the gift of
description, although her thoughts were clothed in the rude
vernacular of her native village--one could seem to see Luella
Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia
Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather
unusual in New England.
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