Miss Hetty Henderson, with whom the reader has just passed through the ceremony of introduction, is a maiden of some thirty-five summers, attired in a sober-looking dress, of irreproachable neatness, but most formal cut.  She is the only occupant of the house, of which likewise she is proprietor.  Her father, who was the village physician, died some ten years since, leaving to Hetty, or perhaps I should give her full name, Henrietta, his only child, the house in which he lived, and some four thousand dollars in bank stock, on the income of which she lived very comfortably.

Somehow, Miss Hetty had never married, though, such is the mercenary nature of man, the rumor of her inheritance brought to her feet several suitors.  But Miss Hetty had resolved never to marry—­at least, this was her invariable answer to matrimonial offers, and so after a time it came to be understood that she was fixed for life—­an old maid.  What reasons impelled her tothis course were not known, but possibly the reader will be furnished with a clue before he finishes this narrative.

Meanwhile, the invariable effect of a single and solitary life combined, attended Hetty.  She grow precise, prim and methodical to a painful degree.  It would have been quite a relish if one could have detected a stray thread even upon her well swept carpet, but such was never the case.

On this particular day—­this Thanksgiving day of which we are speaking—­Miss Hetty had completed her culinary preparations, that is, she had stuffed her turkey, and put it in the oven, and kneaded her pudding, for, though but one would be present at the dinner, and that herself, her conscience would not have acquitted her, if she had not made all the preparations to which she had been accustomed on such occasions.

This done, she sat down to her knitting, casting a glance every now and then at the oven to make sure that all was going on well.  It was a quiet morning, and Miss Hetty began to think to the clicking of her knitting needles.

“After all,” thought she, “it’s rather solitary taking dinner alone, and that on Thanksgiving day.  I remember a long time ago, when my father was living, and my brothers and sisters, what a merry time we used to have round eth table.  But they are all dead, and I—­I alone am left!”

Miss Hetty sighed, but after a while the recollections of those old times returned.  She tried to shake them off, but they had a fascination about them after all, and would not go at her bidding.

“There used to be another there,” thought she, “Nick Anderson.  He, too, I fear, is dead.”