"Indisputable! Friend Penn took Thomas Fairman's house at Shackamaxon--otherwise Eel-Hole--and in this pleasant springtime, April 4, 1683, he met King Tammany under the forest elm, with the savage people in half-moon circles, looking at the healthy-fed and business-like Quaker. There Tammany and his Indian allies surrendered all the land between the Pennypack and Neshaminy." "A Tammany haul!" interrupted young Calvin Van de Lear, rather idiotically. "What did the shrewd William give?" "Guns, scissors, knives, tongs, hoes, and Indian money, and gew-gaws--not much. Philadelphia had no foundation then, and Shackamaxon was an established place. We are the Knickerbockers here in Kensington." "An honest Quaker would not build a spire," wrote Duff Salter, with a grim smile. Duff Salter was well known to the gossips of Kensington as a fabulously rich man, who had spent his youth partly in this district, and was of Kensington parentage, but had roved away to Mexico as a sailor boy, or clerk, or passenger, and refusing to return, had become a mule-driver in the mines of cinnabar, and there had remained for years in nearly heathen solitude, until once he arrived overland in Arkansas with a train from Chihuahua, the whole of it, as was said, laden with silver treasure, and his own property. He had been disappointed in love, and had no one to leave his riches to. This was the story told by Reverend Silas Van de Lear. The people of Kensington were less concerned with the truth of this tale than with the future intentions of the visitor. "How long he tarries in Zane's homestead!" said the people that spring. "Hasn't he settled that estate yet?" "It never will be settled if he can help it," said public Echo, "as long as there are two fine young women there, and one of them so fascinating over men!" Indeed, Duff Salter received letters, anonymous, of course--the anonymous letter was then the suburban press--admonishing him to beware of his siren hostess. "_She has ruined two men_," said the elegant female handwriting before observed. "_You must want to be the subject of a coroner's inquest. That house is bloody and haunted, rich Mr. Duff Salter! Beware of Lady Agnes, the murderess! Beware, too, of her accomplice, the insinuating little Byerly!_"