"Well, Simon, when I go to call on any one I like to talk about something—I can't sit like a dummy—"
"You can't!"
"And that was certainly the most interesting bit of news that I had. It quite woke her up. She's something of a blue-stocking, you know, and has read a lot about the early history of this country. When I spoke of the monk she looked very queer and went straight to a shelf of books and took out this one—" Miss Ocky held up the one she was carrying, and Varr saw that she was keeping a place in it with one forefinger. "When she showed me a certain passage in it, I put it right under my arm and brought it—"
"You needn't have," he told her abruptly. "I recognize the thing, though I've never bothered to read it; Jennison's 'History of Wayne County,' isn't it? There's a copy among your father's books in the library."
"Is there? I wish I'd known it!" She opened the book at her place, steadied the heavy volume on her knees and cleared her throat. "I am going to read this to you, Simon—it isn't long."
"Go ahead." He had tried overnight to put the disagreeable subject out of his mind but had not succeeded very well. He was consumed by curiosity now to learn what she had discovered, though nothing would have induced him to admit it. "What's it all about?"
She began to read in a soft, well-modulated voice.
"'Wayne County is not without its share of legends and quaint scraps of folklore, some of them nicely calculated to chill the blood o' nights. One fable, at least, has risen from a base of fact; I refer to the famous Monk of Hambleton. Ancient chronicles of this town record the arrival—in pre-Revolutionary times—of an unfortunate individual whose face had been shockingly mutilated by accident or disease. He drifted to Hambleton from the outer world and apparently quartered himself on the countryside, living the life of a hermit in a small dry cave that still shows traces of his presence. He habitually wore the garb of a friar—a penance, perhaps, for former sins—and his disfigured face was always concealed from curious eyes by a mask of black cloth.
"'After his death—a lonely demise in his humble cave—a story sprang up about him to the effect that his spirit still lingered in the neighborhood of its passing. Several credible persons claimed at different times to have met the Monk, and since by some unhappy chance these victims of an optical delusion were all subsequently visited by misfortune in greater or less degree, it soon began to be whispered about that to encounter the specter was a sure augury of impending calamity. A local poet, long since forgotten, was inevitably inspired to preserve the legend in his rustic doggerel. I append a few couplets:
"'Who meets the monk at crack o' dawn
Shall rue the day that he was born.