I left the mare in the yard and went into the parlor. Mrs. Searle had evidently been interrupted in her morning tidying, and she came back, duster in hand, as I stood there. I had enough experience to know her for a woman who did not give herself to gossip, though she probably knew all that was afoot, by the curious intuitive sense so highly developed in all women of her class. With her I would be perfectly safe in any inquiries I chose to make. She apologized for her intrusion and set about completing her tour of the furniture, with noiseless briskness. "I see you've been down to the village, sir," she said after a moment. "I was going to ask whether you'd order some more coal up for tomorrow, from Harkness's. It's most finished." "I'll send Pete this afternoon. He can walk in. By the way, Mrs. Searle, what was this story about Jake Menning? I just heard something of it in the village today." "Jake Menning..." She paused in her dusting, setting back a vase carefully on the mantelshelf. "I suppose you'd have heard of it, sir. He was killed last March, goin' down Dutchman's Hill. There isn't much water now, but it's generally deep there, long after the spring rains. Some did say it was done a-purpose, but the most of 'em thinks he jest had a fit an' fell in. Doctor Lennox found him, about six o'clock in the mornin', driving back from a night call. He was lyin' jest at the foot of the hollow, where them planks begin, with his face in the water. It wasn't deep enough to drown anyone ordinarily, an' that's why they thought it was a seizure. "There was two half-brothers, Jake an' Aaron, both livin' over near the Bend. Aaron's took the whole business over now. Jake was always kind o' queer; they called him crazy sometimes, round the village. They was as like as two peas, which was queer, seein' they was on'y half related, so to speak. Down to the smallpox scars an' all. They'd both took the smallpox, but Jake took it worse, and they said that was what affected his brain some. You couldn't tell 'em apart, on'y for Aaron's stutterin'. "Aaron was the best of the two. He's a good chapel member, and he's done a lot better in the business since Jakey's out of it. I heard they used to quarrel a lot in Jake's lifetime. Aaron's savin', and a bit close with his money too, and I recon he kep' Jake under some. He was an awful ill-lookin' man, Jake Menning--not that I like to say wrong of the dead, but I know a bad-lookin' man when I see one, an' Jake was that, for all his craziness. There weren't anyone liked him much, so they said he was harmless as a child, and right smart in business, an' now they ain't content with his being dead but they must get to startin' nonsense about his walking---excuse me mentionin' any such silly talk to you, sir!" "Walking?" I stared.