“Hum, now, you don’t say! I thought like as not everybody had heerd tell of him. It was after the sheep-raisin’ business had been given up in these parts, and there wa’n’t no one a-livin’ in the cabin at that time. Your grandpa, Della, had locked it up and kept the key. Well, one day a long, lank man from nobody knew where appeared in these parts, and asked ole Daniel Doring if he might rent that cabin for a spell. Your grandad was for givin’ the under fellow a chance, and this stranger said he was here to recuperate his health or some such, and so he got the key and was told he could live there as long as he chose and welcome.
“The man stayed pretty close to the cabin, and the folks in town was puzzled about him, and so one night two of the boys went out there and they clum up the side of the cabin somehow, and peeked in at that little high window, and Josh Perkins said afterwards that he almost fell down agin, when he saw what was a-goin’ on inside of that cabin. There sat the long, lank man at the table, and in the candlelight he was a-countin’ out gold pieces. Josh said he had a bag full of them. People were suspicious, of course, when they heerd that, and the very next day the sheriff went out to the cabin, and what do you think? The place was empty. Like as not the miser had heerd the boys prowlin’ about in the night, and he left for parts unknown and took his gold with him, I suppose, though nobody knows as to that, for your grandad, Della, locked the cabin right up then and kept the key.”
Half an hour later the girls were again driving down the road. “What a strange, uncanny story that was about the miser!” Gertrude said with a shudder.
“Rosamond has always said that the furniture in the cabin would probably tell queer stories if it could talk,” Adele remarked. And then she added suddenly, “Oh, Gertrude! Don’t you wish that we could find that gold, and then we could take care of the Quigleys!”
Gertrude laughed. “If he was a miser, he certainly took his gold with him.” Then she asked, “Della, did you ever hear what Miss Grackle’s great sorrow was, the one that made her turn against every one and live all alone by herself in that dismal house by the woods?”
“Yes,” Adele replied. “Father was telling mother about it last night. He said that when he was a boy, Miss Grackle and a younger sister lived in that big, rambling house on the Dickerson Road, the one that has been boarded up for so many years. The sister’s name was Miranda, and she was about ten years younger than Sally, and very pretty, but father said she was nowhere near as capable. They lived together very happily after their father died. Sally did all of the housework and waited on Miranda hand and foot, as the saying goes, and the younger one, who was rather selfish, accepted it as her due. They owned the house and land together, but they each had plenty of money besides. Then one day a stranger appeared in town, and, having heard that the pretty Miranda Grackle had a fortune in her own right, he began to court her. Miss Sally quickly saw that he was a mere adventurer, trying to marry some one with money, and she begged Miranda to give him up, but she wouldn’t, and then one night they ran away and were secretly married. Miss Sally was heartbroken. She heard that they had gone to Arizona, where the man had mines. She followed them there, but never found them. She came back a broken-hearted woman, boarded up the old homestead where she had been so happy, and then went to live all alone in that house out by the woods.”
“Poor Miss Grackle!” Gertrude said. “Here we are by the Dickerson Road, Adele. Would it be much out of our way to drive past the boarded-up house? I never happened to notice it.”
“No,” Adele replied, as she turned the pony’s head in that direction. “The house is just beyond that clump of trees.”
When the little grove was passed, the girls gave an exclamation of surprise. “Why, it isn’t boarded up at all,” Gertrude said. “See, even the windows are open.”
“And if there isn’t Miss Grackle herself,” Adele cried, as a tall, elderly woman appeared in the doorway to shake a dustcloth. She had on a big apron, with a towel about her head.