“We call our place the Ralston House,” he said, “and have owned it for years and years. Built it, in fact, or my great-grandfather did, when there wasn’t so much as a shanty on the island. He was a sea captain, and folks wondered he didn’t live in Nantucket with the rest of the captains, instead of pitching his tent in a lonely desert as it was then. Some old gossips say, and, by Jove, with truth, I believe, that he was a kind of smuggler, running his ship into Still Haven, a safe harbor near Oak City, and then hiding his goods in the Ralston House till he could dispose of them. Not the best kind of an ancestor to have, but that’s a great many years ago, and I don’t in the least mind telling you about the old chap whose ship went down in a storm off the Banks. He went with it, and has been eaten by the fishes by this time. The house he built is a queer old ark, or was before we fixed it over. It is large and rambling, with great, square rooms and the biggest chimney you ever saw. All round the chimney in the cellar is a room which I’d defy any one to get into if he didn’t know how. Under the stairs in the front entry is a closet, where father and mother hang their clothes. In a corner of the closet are three matched boards, which fit together perfectly, but come apart easily when you know how to manage them. Behind this partition is the chimney and some rough steps leading down to that room I told you about, and which tradition says was used for smugglers’ goods. In the partition in the cellar there are two or three more places of matched panels, which can be shoved aside to let in light and air. It’s a grand place to hide in if a fellow had done something or folks thought he had. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find you! Funny that I should dream so often of being hidden there. Innocent, you know, but hiding, just as I used to play when a boy with Tom Drake, who lives with us, and Jack Percy, who used to be here every summer from Washington. Your aunt never liked him much. He was rather mischievous, but good fun.”