Rena's Experiment by Mary Jane Holmes

Tom Giles, Attorney at Law in Newton, Mass., sat in his office one hot summer morning, wondering if he should accept an invitation he had received by letter from his friend and college chum, Reginald Travers, to spend a few weeks with him in Oakfield.

"It is not a very gay town," Reginald wrote. "The young persons have mostly emigrated to fairer fields in the west, and the old ones stay because they cannot get away and are attached to their rocky farms and houses and customs of a century ago. Some of them are as full of superstition as the negroes of the South, and I am told that what few young people there are here actually look into wells at noon and walk round haystacks at night, hoping to see their future consorts. To you, who are a descendant of the believers in Salem witchcraft, this sort of thing will be delightful, and I have no doubt you will be looking into a well some day at noon. There is a famous one on Uncle Colin's farm, with a story attached to it.