came out the back of your head. And he never set foot into the meeting-house, nohow.
"Now, he was the last man in the village I'd ever said would got married. But as sure as you set there, when the little milliner, Melinda McAllister, came into the place, he was struck. That wasn't nothing strange—all the young fellows was—but, mind you, she was struck, too. No, you wouldn't 'a' thought it. Everybody warned her, and told her about his father's hangin' himself in prison, and how queer his mother was, and that Mortimer was as odd as Dick's hatband and wouldn't come to no good. She listened, with her eyes big and cool and a little hot patch of red on her cheeks like a daub of paint, but she never said a word. That was Melindy McAllister all over, never to say a blesse word, but go and do just as she saw fit. First we knew they was engaged, and it was given out in meeting. Next day her aunt she lived with came in to see me, and wrung her hands, sayin' she wouldn't be surprised if Melindy was murdered before the year was out. What can you think of a man who lives like a hermit, and had a crooked father and a peculiar mother?
"But we wasn't prepared for the worst. A day or two before the wedding, in comes old Mis' Johnson, and says, 'Shut up the doors tight,' says she, and the winders. I've got something to tell you that'll make your hair rise up,' she says, whisperin'-like. So I shut the door, she a-workin' her hands together like one possessed. It's about Melindy,' she went on. 'He's been and got a tombstone for her.' 'Who?' asked I, as if I didn't know, but my knees knocked together and I felt a bit sick. 'Mortimer Barbour,' says she. My grandson, Johnnie, was after a bird's nest in a tree over in his yard. The limb broke, and down he went right onto the roof of the old cornhouse, that hasn't been used for years. It went in under him like tinder, and as soon as he could pick himself up and found no bones broke, what should he see but a new white gravestone, a-settin' up quite pert in a corner against some rubbish. He went up to it, and he says as true as the Bible he saw 'Melinda Barbour' cut on it, and the date she is a-goin' to die.' 'I don't believe it,' says I, but I was all a-faint, and had to go and make us each a cup of tea, so we could bear up under it.
