S

oon our "get acquainted session" as Lady Hilliard called it came to an end and I prepared to depart, but as I did, two items of interest caught my eye.

One was an oil portrait of a young pretty woman of about five and twenty in a satin gown with a large cherub hovering over her. It seemed to me that Acton's letter mentioned such a portrait.

"It's a portrait of me." said Lady Hilliard. "Not a recent one I'm afraid."

"Nonsense" I replied, "it could have been painted yesterday." It was a bald piece of flattery but she seemed extremely pleased by it.

The other item was a notebook on a table, that look very much like the one I had seen recently at Oliver Acton's home, the Corning "spell book." But as I could think of nothing to say about it, I continued on my way without remark.

As I reached the point where the Hilliard carriage drive met the lane, I was passed by two young women heading for the Hilliard place. I knew them by the description in Acton's letter. It was the Whitlander sisters, two stout, solidly built girls from a local farm. They nodded in greeting and then, once I passed, I heard them whispering and giggling to each other.

By the spring of 1814, work had begun on building the green-house. Early May marks the first of many strange occurrences. It was quite early morning, before my daily post-office visit and I was surveying the work in progress. There was a rough skeleton of a frame in place for the building and lumber and various building tools were scattered around. In a moment I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I realized with a start that not six feet away from me was a large snake.

(To be continued...)