The house had been painted recently and the slate roof was in good repair too. Grudgingly I admitted that the building wasn’t all that ugly. It could be taken for a large school or a meeting hall of some kind.

The front door was of heavy planks bound with iron—I suppose like a prison door. Jack opened it with the large key and we entered a dark hallway and an even gloomier parlor. It was like something out of a turn-­of-­the-­century Sears Roebuck cata­logue.

There was a horsehair sofa, a smaller settee with leather cushions, a couple of rocking chairs with cane seats and, in the center of the room, a pot-­bellied stove. The two small, high windows were covered with heavy double curtains.

“What do you think?” Jack asked. He spread the curtains on one window and coughed as the dust flew.

“Charming,” I said. “For a museum.”

“Come on. Aunt Hannah lived to be ninety-­two here. That says something for a place, doesn’t it, if a person can live to be that old in it. And, heck, if you wanted to change anything, it would be no problem. We could put in central heating—”

“There’s no central heating?” I hadn’t considered that the stove might be necessary.

“Not now, but it would be easy to install it. Also, we could put a big picture window in the front here, throw out all of this old furniture—”

“Some of it might be worth a lot of money to collectors,” Duff said.

“That’s right,” said Jack. “We could probably make enough on it to pay for the renovation. Anyway, let’s take a look at the rest of the house before we turn around and go home.”

He didn’t want to go, I knew that. He wanted to live here, maybe because he felt that in this place he could put aside all the defeats he had suffered and make a fresh start. Also, maybe he thought that if he stayed on the farm, some of his aunt’s longevity would pass on to him. On the other hand, maybe he sensed that his end was approaching and he had some primeval urge to be near the place of his ancestors when it came.

2

Chapter Two

Franny was examining a framed photograph on a table. It was a tintype of a little girl in ruffles standing beside a seated woman who was holding a baby.

“That’s Aunt Hannah,” said Jack, “and that’s her mother, my great-­grandmother. The baby is my granddad, John Caine.”

“And those kids were the son and daughter of the General?” Franny asked.

“That’s right.”

“Do you have a picture of the General?” asked Duff.