“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of General Caine, but there must be one around here somewhere,” Jack said. “By the way, there are electric lights.” He flipped the wall switch and grinned.

“Thanks,” I said. “I wondered.”

We toured the rest of the house and I must admit my antipathy lessened a bit. There was a fairly large dining room, as well as two small bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs, and the kitchen was a complete surprise. It was dominated by a huge wood-­burning stove, but near it stood a modern electric range, and next to that a seemingly almost new refrigerator and freezer.

Upstairs were two more bedrooms and another bathroom. The rest of the second floor area was an enormous storeroom. It would have been an antique dealer’s heaven. Piled on top of one another were pieces of eighteenth and nineteenth century American furniture, as well as a number of items that must have been imported. There were certainly some Louis XV chairs and a Queen Anne chest and a long oak table that looked positively Elizabethan. Taking up a lot of space between the articles of furniture were a great many old trunks, as well as piles of newspapers and books, including scrapbooks.

Duff opened one of these and started to read some yellowed clippings.

“What’s all that stuff?” Franny asked him.

“Newspaper stories about the Civil War mostly. May I take some of these books downstairs and read them, Dad?”

“Later,” Jack said. “There will be plenty of time later.”

I didn’t agree with that, but I held my peace. Then we went out to the back yard, where we found a sizeable barn with cow and horse stalls and lots of rusted farm equipment. From the appearance of the overgrown fields, no farming had been attempted here in many years.

Next to the barn was a wagon shed, containing a collapsed wagon and an even more decrepit two-­seater buggy. Beyond, a weed-­grown path led toward a woods maybe three hundred yards away. Halfway to the woods was the family burial plot. It was perhaps fifty feet square and surrounded by a rusted iron fence.

“I wonder if Aunt Hannah is buried here,” Jack said. “You remember there was a dispute about where she was going to be buried?”

“Something about a local priest.”

“Right. He’d been visiting Aunt Hannah occasionally and he evidently thought she wanted to become a Catholic. I think he wanted to bury her in the Catholic cemetery near Cainesville. Mrs. Reddy insisted that Aunt Hannah had told her that she wanted to be be buried here with the family. Anyway, I left it for Aunt Hannah’s lawyer to decide. When I flew home, the body was still at the funeral home.”