“I b’lieve that’s the name; sounds like it, though who she was I don’t know,” Uncle Zacheus replied, and continued: “The next day what did Mr. Dalton do but go to Worcester in the stage and buy her a silk gown that would stan’ alone, and a string of gold beads. Dot’s ancestor’s wife’s sister, or aunt, I don’t remember which, made the gown, and Miss Dalton wore it and the beads and a new bunnet to meetin’ the next Sunday, lockin’ arms with her husband all the way, and lookin’ up in his face lovin’ like with her great pretty blue eyes which had something queer in ’em, rollin’ round as if watchin’ for somethin’. I’ll be dumbed if Mark hain’t the same trick with his eyes, and that’s all the hereditary he has from that jade. She’d heard what folks was sayin’, but was jest as sweet and innocent as a lamb, and sent some flowers to Dot’s ancestor’s wife, who had said the most about her. “Wall, I don’t git on very fast, do I? but, as I was sayin’, time went on, and it was summer again, and folks had kinder forgot. St. John wa’n’t in town, nor hadn’t been that anybody knew, unless it was Mari, who kep’ a close mouth. The vally wasn’t in town, nor the vally’s brother,—no more his brother than you are. That came out on the trial. “Wall, there was an awful thunder shower one night,—struck the Unitarian Church and knocked the steeple into splinters, and rained till the gutters run like a river, and you could almost go in a boat the street was so full of water. Mr. Dalton was at the tarvern when the storm came up, and waited for it to stop. It was dark as pitch, and they tried their best not to have him go home. But go he would. His wife would be anxious and not sleep a wink, he said, and about eleven o’clock, when it had nearly stopped raining, he started with a lantern, and that was the last he was ever seen alive. “I’m gettin’ to the p’int, and I shall have to take a turn or two more, for it is very affectin’ as you go on.” He took a turn or two, and returned to his chair, saying, “I guess now I can stan’ it to tell you the rest.” CHAPTER V. THE TRAGEDY. “Next mornin’, about eight o’clock, Mari come to the tarvern to know where Mr. Dalton was, that he didn’t come home. “‘He did go home,’ says Dot’s ancestor. “‘He didn’t come home,’ says Mari, ‘and Miss Dalton is dreadfully worried for fear he’s sick. Never slep’ a wink, and kep’ a candle burnin’ all night.’ “I don’t know what put it into his head to think somethin’ was wrong, but he did,—Dot’s ancestor, I mean, and why the plague can’t I think of his name! I know it as well as I do my own. Here, Jeff, you rascal, come here,” he called, as the boy came leaping across the end of the piazza like a young deer. “Go and ask Miss Taylor the name of her ancestor who kep’ the tavern when Mr. Dalton was killed.”