“How long ago was it?” I asked at length, to set him going.
“Well, sir, it might be five-and-twenty years ago that that wreck took place. You was hardly more than out of your nursery then, I’m thinking. As for me, I was a chap of maybe forty—or maybe not so much; my old father he had just parted his last cable, as I might say, and I had just come in from a voyage to the Pacific Coast for hides, and was living in this house alone by myself. I’d come home, sir, to find the girl as had given me her word spliced to another man; and so it happened that I stayed a bachelor till after the age when many find themselves grandads. But I wedded at last, sir, as ye see, and never had cause to think the worse of myself for doing it!”
“I should think not, indeed,” I assented, laughing. But meanwhile I was telling myself that Agatha must be nearly twenty years old, and that if Poyntz had wedded only at the age of a grandfather, she could hardly be his own offspring by marriage. Were the doubts which her aspect had already suggested to me well founded, then? I prudently waited, in the hope that this question likewise might find its answer in the course of my host’s story.
“It was along about that time, sir,” Poyntz continued, having acknowledged my compliment with a friendly nod, “that I first came acquainted with Scholar Gloam, as the folks called him; him that yonder point’s named after, and that lived at the Laughing Mill, over there, back of the wood. But now I come for to think on it,” broke off the old yarn-spinner, pulling his meerschaum out of the corner of his mouth and looking round at me, “did I ever chance to speak to ye of Scholar Gloam afore?”
“I don’t think you ever did; but I always like to hear about anything that has a picturesque nickname, as almost everything hereabouts seems to have.”
The hale old man laughed, and raked his brown fingers through his spreading beard. “In an out-of-the-way place like this, sir,” said he, “where’s few enough things anyway, nicknames come natural. Well, now, as touching Scholar Gloam, he died nigh a score of years ago; leastways he knocked off living in the body. For there be those,” lowering his voice and wrinkling his brows, “there be those—superstitious like—ready to take affidavit of having seen him, certain days in the year, a prowling round the Laughing Mill. His grave is near by, right under the Black Oak; and maybe the place is a bit skeery.
“Howsoever, that don’t concern us now. When I knew Scholar Gloam, he was a middling-sized, slender-built young gentleman, having queer hair not all of the same colour, and a trick of talking to himself in a sort of a low mumbling way, as it might be the bubbling of water under a ship’s stern, if ye know what I mean, sir. He was a comely favoured man of the pale sort, and grave and silent, though always the gentleman in his manners, as by blood and breeding. For the Gloams was the great family here fifty years ago, and was landlords of most of the farms roundabout; but they steered a bad course, as I might say, and died out, so as Scholar Gloam was the last of ’em. Old Harold, the Scholar’s father, he was a reckless devil if any man ever was; and when he died ’twas found that Gloam Hall and all belonging thereto must go to the auction. The only bit left was the Laughing Mill itself, and an acre or two of land round about it.”
“What did the mill laugh at, Mr. Poyntz? its own prosperity?”
“Nay, sir!” returned the burly mariner, shaking his head. “I heard it laugh once, and I’d as soon crack jokes with Davy Jones as listen to it again. ’Twas a mad, wild scream more than a laugh, and like nothing human, praise goodness, that ever I heard! There was ugly yarns about that mill, d’ye see; folks said as how it had killed a man, and afterwards had got possessed with his evil spirit that was always roaming about seeking whom it might devour ... or maybe I’ve got things a bit mixed!”
“Who was it that was killed?” I suggested.