‘No; but we can write to Jane and ask her to answer our questions with just yes or no. When she is Mrs. Hiram (I wonder if he ever had a last name) she will get it out of him if we can only interest her.’
‘Jane,’ said Hiram that evening, ‘if you could manage to wash on Saturday, so as to have an off-day on Monday, I don’no but we might as well be married then as any other time. I should feel sort of easier in my mind if Maria came down to live with us before they think her room is better than her company up to the Fifes’, if Hannah should die.’
‘That’s so, Hiram. I’ll hurry round and fix things, and you better stop to-night and tell Maria that I’ll be real glad to have her come and live with us; and Hiram, I’ve been thinking that if the men folks did save that blue-chintz sofy—’
‘Wait a minute, Jane, I sort of want to tell you somethin’; ’taint anythin’ I should want you to repeat, but it’s somethin’ that sort of troubles me some. You see, Miss Hannah she’s always been good to me, and I shouldn’t want to say anythin’ to set folks a-talkin’; but Miss Hannah haint been exactly well for some weeks, and only the day before the fire she came to me and she says she thought ’twas about time she put that old trunk full of duds, the one she’s always kept in her closet, out of the way, and she guessed she’d have me burn it up. I thought ’twas most a pity to destroy the trunk—it was a real good one, and hadn’t never seen no travel to speak of—and so I said I’d take the things out and burn ’em; that seemed to trouble her, and she was real short with me. She said I was no better than all the other folks, that I was pryin’ round to see what she kep’ in it. I sort of soothed her, and then she said she’d been pestered most to death by folks always askin’ her about some old blue chintz, and about a little room; and she guessed that if she could put that trunk out of sight, mebby folks would mind their own business and let her have some peace. So when Maria was out to the garden for some stuff for dinner, Miss Hannah she got me to help her carry the trunk out of her room and put it in the hall-closet; it wan’t no kind of a place to keep it, but I thought it was better to humor her a mite, seein’ she was out of sorts.
‘In the middle of the night,’ continued Hiram, dropping his voice and looking round to see that nobody was coming up the walk, ‘in the middle of the night I smelt smoke, and thought right off that the barn must be a-burnin’, but I couldn’t see no light; then I heard a sort of smothered noise, and I suspicioned right off what was the matter. I run to Maria’s room and found her stumblin’ round in the dark—her room bein’ full of smoke she was sort of confused—and there was a turrible glare out in the hall. We found Miss Hannah out there wringin’ her hands and callin’ out: “Oh, the trunk will be burnt up, the trunk will be burnt up!” We couldn’t coax her to go away, and it did seem as she’d burn up in her tracks if I hadn’t just took her and carried her out. By that time the house was all blazin’, and, though the folks began to come, it wan’t no use—it had to go. Hannah she was all dressed, and I don’t believe she had been to bed.’
‘You don’t think she set the house afire, Hiram?’
‘No, not a-meanin’ to; but what I think is that she felt lonesome without that trunk, and so she went down to the hall-closet when she thought we was asleep, and either she dropped her candle or else the things that hung in the closet caught fire, and she didn’t see it till ’t was too late, and then she was so fearful that the trunk would burn she wouldn’t go away.’
‘What was in the trunk?’
Hiram shuffled from one foot to the other, then hesitated a little, and said: