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Through her mother’s stories, she had heard all about the Reverend Jeremiah Fairchild who had come to Taylor Springs in 1896 with his young wife, and who had built a church and guided the lives, not only of his own family, but of the whole community for thirty-seven years. He had been a very important man in Taylor Springs, and all of the picture albums in Aunt Abigail’s storeroom were full of pictures of him. In some of the pictures he was doing important things like dedicating the new schoolhouse or giving a talk at the Fourth of July picnic. And in all of the pictures he looked very much the same, tall and dignified with a face like the face of a statue, handsome and dignified and unsmiling.
    Amy spent almost as much time looking at the pictures of her grandfather as she did the ones of her grandmother, but they gave her a very different feeling. While the pictures of her poor young grandmother Amy made her feel sad in a rather pleasant romantic way, the ones of her grandfather were somehow a little frightening. She didn’t know why, exactly, except that it seemed so impossible that such an important and determined-looking person would allow his plans to be interrupted by dying. There were times when, looking up from his pictures, Amy almost expected to see him standing in the door of the storeroom, wearing a long dark coat and a stern and dignified expression.
    When Amy reached the door of the storeroom, she stopped for a moment and listened carefully to be sure that no one was coming up the stairs. Aunt Abigail had never in so many words forbidden Amy to go to the room alone, probably because it never occurred to her that she would want to, but her mother had warned her about it. Aunt Abigail was very particular, she said, about everything being put back in exactly the right place. So, Amy reasoned, it wouldn’t matter as long as she put everything back in just the right place. Actually, she really knew she shouldn’t go there. It was just that she couldn’t seem to help it. She didn’t know what it was that made the storeroom so strangely irresistible, except that she had a mysterious feeling that somewhere in the crowded room was something, or perhaps a lot of things, that she needed to find out about.
    She had been in the storeroom many times without finding out anything very important, but that was not surprising since she didn’t know where to look, or even exactly what she was looking for. For a while she thought perhaps the desk, or one of the other pieces of old furniture, might have a secret drawer or compartment that would fly open if she found the hidden spring and reveal—a treasure, or perhaps an important secret document. At other times she felt the clue might be found in the bundles of old letters or postcards, or even in the pictures in one of the photograph albums.
    She had already discovered a small clue to some kind of mystery concerning one of the old photographs. One day, when she and her mother were looking through the albums, Aunt Abigail had appeared in the doorway just as Amy found a beautiful picture of two little girls dressed in fancy high-necked dresses, standing hand in hand on the front steps of the Taylor Springs church. The picture was labeled Abigail and Helen Fairchild—ages 8 and 6.
    “Look, Aunt Abigail,” Amy had said, bringing her the album. “Look at you and Mama. Look at the big hair ribbons and the beautiful dresses.”
    But Aunt Abigail had only glanced at the picture briefly, shaking her head and smiling a strange, almost angry smile. As she handed it back, she said something under her breath that sounded like, “Poor little puppets.” She walked away then, but when Amy had questioned her mother about it, she had learned very little.
    “Did she say that?” Amy’s mother had said. “Are you sure? I can’t imagine what she meant by that. I can’t imagine—” But then she sat for a long time fingering the edges of the album and looking at the picture of the