THE HIRE

"Corn's high this year," chirped the old woman, almost with a cackle. "All's the better for them to hide in," the old woman was continuing, her face a brazen mixture of distain and contempt.

"These come to the house, late model cars, too, and just wait. Lord if I knows what for," her voice trailing off, reedy, almost water besotted much as the likeness of an old boot, the colour of her wrinkled skin.

Old Meg was an authority of sorts in these parts. Seems she had had her share of the strange and eventful in her time.

At the age of sixteen she had married. I'm speaking now of early in this century, just as the car was making its appearance in this part of eastern Ontario. Right away her new husband and she had bought a farm some eight miles distance from Kincaid off Palace Road.

"Yeh, well we weren't in that house morn a week when the strangest things began happenin'." That was the extent of her explanation as to why she and her hubbies of a few months made the journey into town to stay at her in-laws not once but every night of their married life for over forty years.

Meg was a recalcitrant soul. Probably had she been born three centuries earlier folks would have said worse. Certainly she said little and allowed you to say scarce more. Why, even now she was staring at you, just like her custom offering only a pittance of facts as to why there occurred an exodus of cars to the lone side-road by the big weathered house. A cynic would have begged the hire of something illicit to summon numbers in that quantity. Old Meg let it be known it was something more profound than that. Her every manner convinced you comments as such were guilty of the grossest understatement.