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and had the musty, almost evil, smell of shut old places. Mice squeaked constantly in hidden corners dark with age and shadows. After gathering the tattered bags and her own straw suitcases, Beth paused. She listened intently. But Kate never came up here on her arthritic and ancient legs. There was no sound but the heaving and incessant pulsing of the sea, like a gigantic and mysterious heart. Beth had bought a naked waxen doll in the village for Caroline’s Christmas present; she had spent the three dollars Caroline had given her for her birthday. It was very pretty and large, with blue glass eyes tangled in a thicket of spiky lashes, and it wore a perpetual rosy smile, and its arms and legs could be moved. Moreover, it had a mane of coarse yellow horsehair. It deserved the finest of satin and silk and velvet clothing. Thoughtfully the woman eyed some old trunks in the attic. Old trunks were famous for containing cast-off dresses and laces and ribbons. Beth tiptoed to the trunks and opened one. It held nothing but rusty iron tools and some chains. She closed it; the next one held not a thing but dust. What had become of the dead Ann’s dresses and mantles and hats? There was one last trunk, and the lid creaked loudly when Beth opened it.
     
    A flat thin parcel, wrapped in newspaper so old that it was yellow and broken, lay in the bottom of the trunk. Beth curiously picked it up; she knew at once from the weight and the bumpy border of the parcel that it was a picture of some kind. The newspaper crackled and fell apart in her hands. The light in the attic was failing; Beth carried the parcel to the window and, holding it close to her eyes, peered at the newspaper. It had been published, not in Boston, but in a strange place called Genesee, New York, and the date was April 4, 1839. Thirty-one years ago! The paper drifted in crisp fragments from Beth’s hands. Then recklessly she tore the rest away.
     
    It was a portrait, about twenty inches by twenty-eight. Beth held it closer to the gray and uncertain light. It was as if the young Caroline were looking up at her from the canvas. The shimmering golden eyes smiled at Beth from the square pale face with its big chin and coarse nose. Big ears flared from the sides of the too large head; that head appeared to be set, as Caroline’s was, almost solidly on the wide shoulders, with practically no neck. But the dark fine hair was very thin, appearing hardly more than a glimmering lacquer over the skull.
     
    Then Beth, holding the portrait closer to the indistinct light, saw that this was a portrait, not of a girl or a woman, but of a man of about thirty-eight or a little younger. He was dressed in the fashion she remembered of her own father; he did not wear the modern wide black or crimson or dark blue cravat. He wore a white stock pierced with a simple golden pin. Beth knew nothing of art. She only knew that the face — especially the eyes — was very vivid and alive. She saw that some words had been brushed upon the lower right-hand corner of the canvas, and she had to squint to read them.
     
    “Self-portrait. D.A. 1838.”
     
    The canvas had been set in a carved wooden frame; flecks of gold still remained on it; they filtered on Beth’s hands. A gust of wind caused the fragments of paper on the floor to move and whisper like old dried leaves, and Beth started. Suddenly there was a harsh pattering on the wooden roof; it had begun to rain, and the large drops were stonelike on the thin shingles. Beth put the portrait back in the trunk. She brushed up the fragments of old paper and tossed them onto the portrait. But even in that dusk the eyes shone up at her, living and vital, and very kind, with a hint of shyness. Shivering, Beth closed the trunk with a feeling that she was shutting away, not a portrait, but a face that lived and understood. It was a kind of horror to her, thinking that those eyes now stared in darkness.
     
    She gathered up the empty bags and lumbered