"Mrs. Lawrence," began my companion, "was born at Scotch Plains about fifty years ago. Her father's name was Hiram Jarvis. He had made a comfortable fortune in the dry-goods business in New York, and had built himself a country-house at Scotch Plains, going in to New York every morning and returning every evening. Scotch Plains is a very small place--a mere village--but has a number of handsome country homes. It is not on the railroad, but lies about a mile back of Fanwood, which is its station. It has a little Presbyterian church, and when I graduated in '65 from Princeton seminary, I received a call to it, which I accepted. Mr. Jarvis and his daughter were members of my congregation--the former, indeed, being the president of the board of trustees." I nodded my interest. Plainly I had done well in coming to Dr. Schuyler. "Jarvis was a tall, straight, austere Scotchman of the old school," continued the clergyman, "with a belief in predestination and eternal punishment, which was--well--rather fanatical, even for those days. His daughter was a beautiful girl of seventeen or eighteen. Her mother had died some years before and she was left solely in her father's care, without brothers or sisters. There was an aunt in New York City, a younger sister of her father, and married to a banker named Heminway, but she seemingly took little interest in the girl. Her character--or so I judged the few times I saw her--was much like her brother's, tempered, perhaps, with a little more worldliness. I think she's still living; at least, I've never heard of her death. She has been a widow for many years. "So the girl grew up in the lonely house, with only her father to care for. I sometimes thought his treatment of her a little severe--he would rarely permit her to take part in even the most innocent merry-making--and I often found myself pitying her. But I concluded it was none of my business--a conclusion which was cowardly, perhaps; but that was my first charge, and Jarvis was quite a terrifying man." I could well believe it, and said so. "There was another member of my congregation," went on Dr. Schuyler, "concerning whom I had doubts of quite an opposite character--that was young Boyd Endicott. The Endicott place lay just beyond the Jarvis house, which it quite overshadowed, for the Endicotts were very wealthy. The father did not belong to my church--nor, indeed, to any church--and I seldom met him. He had been associated with Jim Fisk in some operations which seemed to me of questionable honesty--though Fisk's reputation may have prejudiced me unduly. But his wife was a lovely Christian woman, and devoted to her children." "Her children?" I repeated. The story interested me so intensely that I wanted every detail.