Palma laughed and dropped into her chair, and when Mrs. Pole had looked at her muffins and seen that they were doing well, and taken her own seat on a cane chair, Palma began: “I will tell it to you as Cleve told it to me, for it is like a story, Poley. Here goes! “Once upon a time there was an old man—a very rich old man—who lived in an old stone house at the foot of a mountain, called Wolfscliff, and the woods that clothed the side of the mountain were called Wolfswalk, because, when the land was surveyed and the first house was built there was neither sleep by night nor safety by day, for the wolves. They carried off hens and geese and sheep and calves, and—horror to relate!—even the little negro babies. This was how the place received its name. The wolves were worse than the Indians. They could neither be fought off nor bought off, but had gradually to die off, like the Indians. “So the name came down the generations to the time of Jeremiah Cleve, the old man with whom my story commenced, and who lived in an old stone farmhouse in the woods at the foot of the mountain—a house many times larger than the log cabin of his first American ancestor. “This Jeremiah had married an heiress in his own neighborhood, and so had doubled his fortune. “They had three sons. “John, the eldest, was, according to the law of primogeniture then prevailing in Virginia, heir to the landed estate of his father. This John, when he was but twenty years of age, became engaged to be married to the beautiful daughter of the man who owned the nearest plantation to Wolfswalk. It was a long engagement, on account of the young fiancée’s extreme youth; but just when they were going to be married, when he was twenty-five and she was eighteen, she caught a severe cold while out sleighing with him, and died within a week of inflammation of the lungs. She was buried in her bridal dress, on her wedding day. It is said that on her deathbed he solemnly vowed himself to her, lover and husband, for time and eternity. That was seventy years ago, and he has kept his faith. He is now a lonely old man of ninety-five, the solitary master of Wolfscliff, waiting for the Lord to call him to join his bride in heaven. “The younger sons, Charles and James, were, by the terms of the marriage settlements of their parents, co-heirs of their mother’s estate; and if there had been ten, they would have all been equal co-heirs, and each portion small; as there were but two, each portion was considerable.