CHAPTER II
Mrs. Parlin Testifies
In addition to the ill-fated lawyer, there were but
three people in the Parlin household—the widow;
a general house girl, Mary Mullin; and the hired man,
Jonathan Oldbeg, a nephew of the Mullin woman.
Oldbeg was about thirty, and his aunt forty. The
widow's room was in the northwest corner of the
second floor, while that of the Mullin woman was
over the kitchen. The hired man slept over the
woodshed. All the windows of the three rooms gave
to the north, excepting two in Mrs. Parlin's room,
which opened to the west, overlooking the orchard
and the river.
Mrs. Parlin was a tall, striking woman who carried her head, crowned with waves of white hair, with an air that some named queenly, and others by that terrible New England word "conceited." The death of her husband had been a terrible blow to her soaring ambitions; but this she had outlived, at least
