When, after two years, it became known that on or about the twentieth of October Mary Baxter was going to have a baby, the town of Rumley and the country for miles about experienced a thrill of interest that continued without abatement up to the very eve of the new Oliver’s natal day, when, as before mentioned, it was stifled by a sudden change in the weather and the belated descent of the gypsies. It must not be assumed that the gypsies were welcome. Far from it, they were most unwelcome. Their appearance on the outskirts of Rumley was the occasion of dire apprehensions and considerable uneasiness. The word gypsy was synonymous with thievery, kidnaping, black magic and devilry. More than one instance of curses being put upon respectable people by these swarthy, black-eyed vagabonds could be mentioned, and no one felt secure after foolishly subjecting herself to the dire influence of the fortune-telling females of the tribe. Little children were kept indoors, stables and cellars were locked, and backyards zealously watched during the time the gypsies were in the neighborhood. Small wonder then that the young and tender Oliver failed to hold his own against such overwhelming odds. Nearly twenty-four hours elapsed before the town as a whole took notice of him. By nightfall it was pretty generally known that he was a boy and that his name, provisionally selected, was to be Oliver and not Olivet, as it might have been had his sex been what everybody prophesied it was bound to be. Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, in the second year of their married life, had gone to a nearby city to see a performance of the comic opera “Olivet,” and were so delighted with it—especially the song “In the North Sea Lived a Whale”—that they decided then and there if a girl should ever be born to them they would call her Olivet, that being as near to Oliver as they could possibly come. They yearned for an Oliver, of course, but in the event he did not materialize, it would be a rather satisfactory compromise to substitute a “t” for the “r” which they would have preferred. So they called him Oliver and added October to that, as a tribute to the month in which he was born. The Baxter residence, a two-story frame building, stood at the top of a tree-covered knoll on the edge of the town, overlooking an extensive swamp in the center of which lay a reed-encircled pond where at certain seasons of the year migratory wild ducks and geese disported themselves in perfect security, for so treacherous was the vast morass guarding this little body of water that even the most daring and foolhardy of hunters feared to cross it. These evil acres bore the name of Death Swamp. They belonged to Oliver Baxter. He bought the whole tract, four hundred acres or more, for twenty-five dollars, and with a droll sense of humor described it as his back yard.