“I don’t know about that,” objected the stone-cutter.  “There was, in those days, a little orphan girl, almost an idiot, who wandered about this town, staying now in one house and now in another as folks took compassion on her.  She was never seen agin after that fire.  If she was in the schoolhouse that day, as she sometimes was, the number would be made up.  No one was left to tell us.  It was an awful time, sir.  The village hasn’t got over it yet.”

Mr. Ransom made some sympathetic rejoinder and withdrew towards the gateway, but soon came strolling back.  The man had arranged his tools and was preparing to go to work.

“It seems as if the family was pretty well represented here,” remarked Ransom.  “Is it the girl herself,—­Anitra, I believe you called her,—­who has ordered this record of her death removed?”

“Oh, no, you don’t know them Hazens.  There’s one of ’em who has quite a story; the twin of this Anitra.  She lived to grow up and have a lot of money left her.  If you lived in Sitford, or lived in New York, you’d know all about her; for her name’s been in the papers a lot this week.  She’s the great lady who married and left her husband all in one day; and for what reason do you think?  We know, because she don’t keep no secrets from her old friends. She’s found this sister, and it’s her as has ordered me to chip away this name.  She wants it done to-day, because she’s coming here with this gal she’s found.  Folks say she ran across her in the street and knew her at once.  Can you guess how?”

“From her name?”

“Lord, no; from what I hear, she hadn’t any name. From her looks! She saw her own self when she looked at her.”

“How interesting, how very interesting,” stammered Mr. Ransom, feeling his newly won convictions shaken again.  “Quite remarkable the whole story.  And so is this inscription,” he added, pointing to the words Georgian Toritti, etc.  “Did the woman have two husbands, and was the Alfred Hazen, whose death at sea is commemorated here, the son of Toritti or of Hazen?”

“Of Toritti,” grumbled the man, evidently displeased at the question.  “A black-browed devil who it won’t do to talk about here.  Mrs. Hazen was only a slip of a gal when she married him, and as he didn’t live but a couple o’ months folks have sort o’ forgiven her and forgotten him.  To us Mrs. Hazen was always Mrs. Hazen; and Alf—­well, he was just Alf Hazen too; a lad with too much good in him to perish in them murderous waters a thousand miles from home.”

So they still believed Hazen dead!  No intimation of his return had as yet reached Sitford.  This was what Ransom wanted to know.  But there was still much to learn.  Should he venture an additional question?  No, that would show more than a stranger’s interest in a topic so purely local.  Better leave well enough alone and quit the spot before he committed himself.

Uttering some commonplace observation about the fatality attending certain families, he nodded a friendly good-by and made for the entrance.