“Craig?  Then she was Ed’s mother?” interrupted Wade.

“Yes.  About a month after the engagement was given out the Colonel drew up the plans of those two houses.  He made the drawin’s himself, and then sot down an’ figured out just how much they’d cost; so much for stone an’ masonry; so much for lumber and carpentry; so much for brick an’ so much for paint.  Then he went to a carpenter over in Redding an’ showed him the plans with the figures writ on ’em an’ asked him if he’d put up the houses.  The carpenter figured an’ said he’d be switched if he’d do it for any such price.  So the Colonel he goes to another feller with like results.  They say most every carpenter between here an’ Portsmouth figured on those houses an’ wouldn’t have anything to do with them.  Then, finally, the Colonel found a man who’d just settled down in Tottingham and opened a shop there.  Came from Biddeford, Maine, I believe, and thought he was pretty foxy.  ‘Well,’ he says, ’there ain’t any money in it for me at those figures, Colonel, but work’s slack an’ I’ll take the contract.’  You see, he thought he could charge a little more here an’ there an’ make something.  But he didn’t know the Colonel.  Every time he’d talk about things costin’ more than he’d thought the Colonel would flash that contract on him.  When the houses was finished he sued the Colonel for a matter of four hundred dollars, but there was the contract, plain as day, an’ he lost his suit.  Just about put him out of business an’ he had to move away.  The Colonel gave one of the houses to Mary—­Mrs. Craig she was by that time—­and the other to Evelyn when she married Irv Walton a year afterwards.”

“But look here,” said Wade.  “Do you mean that Ed Craig’s mother and Miss Walton’s mother were sisters?”

“Yes, Ed and Eve was first cousins.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” sighed Wade.  “I never savvied that.  What became of Mr. Walton, Ed’s uncle?”

“Dead.  Irv was what you call a genius, a writer chap.  Came of a good family over to Concord, he did, an’ had a fine education at Exeter Academy.  He an’ his wife never lived much at The Cedars—­that’s what they called their place—­but used to come here now and then in the summer.  They lived in New York.  He had something to do with one of those magazines published down there.  Irv Walton was a fine lookin’ man, but sort of visionary.  Made a lot of money at one time in mines out West an’ then lost it all about four years ago.  That sort of preyed on his mind, an’ somethin’ like a year after that he up an’ died.”

“And his wife?”

“Oh, she died when Eve was a little girl.  An’ Ed’s mother died about ten years ago.  Miss Eve’s the last one of the old Colonel’s folks.”

Wade sat silent for a minute, puffing hard on his cigar and trying to arrange his facts.

“Does she know of Ed’s death?” he asked.

“Miss Eve?  Oh, I guess so.  I told Doctor Crimmins myself last night an’ I guess he’s been up to The Cedars by this time.  I guess Ed’s death wouldn’t affect her much, though.”