‘Now Jane!’ said Widder Luke (Jane wilted a little); ‘if there was a little room there, where was the door to it--on the inside I mean? I guess I haven’t been to the Baptist Sewing Circle for forty years for nothin’, and the Keyses have had it once every year, in January; and I venture to say I’ve set and sewed in that front room scores of times, and the only door in the front room was the door into the china-closet, except, of course, the door into the hall-way; and as to the dinin’-room, as they called it’ (Si Briggs was a widower, and this was a subtle compliment to him), ‘there wan’t no door at all on that side of the room, just blank wall, with them black pictures of the family done in ink, under glass. I always was struck with that one of Jonathan Keys, it did look exactly like Hannah--just so set and stubborn about the mouth. Poor Hannah, she has had her day though. I have often heard my mother say that Hannah was the prettiest girl in Titusville when she was sixteen, though she was always that stiff. She was sixteen just before she went down to Salem.’ Here was an opening, and Nan plunged in. ‘I heard something about that: didn’t she meet an old sea-captain down there and come near marrying him?’ ‘I don’t know how near she came to marrying him, I know he never came to Titusville. Now I wonder how you ever came to hear that old story; it seems a hundred years ago since my mother told me.’ ‘Here we be!’ called out Mr. Briggs, as he stopped his horse with the soothing down-east osh-sh-sh. Beyond them yawned the black pit where the cellar of the Keys house had been; the ashes still guarded the mystery of the Little Room.