There went a tradition that Madame Beck’s house had in old days been a convent. That in years gone by⁠—how long gone by I cannot tell, but I think some centuries⁠—before the city had overspread this quarter, and when it was tilled ground and avenue, and such deep and leafy seclusion as ought to embosom a religious house⁠—that something had happened on this site which, rousing fear and inflicting horror, had left to the place the inheritance of a ghost-story. A vague tale went of a black and white nun, sometimes, on some night or nights of the year, seen in some part of this vicinage. The ghost must have been built out some ages ago, for there were houses all round now; but certain convent-relics, in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, yet consecrated the spot; and, at the foot of one⁠—a Methuselah of a pear-tree, dead, all but a few boughs which still faithfully renewed their perfumed snow in spring, and their honey-sweet pendants in autumn⁠—you saw, in scraping away the mossy earth between the half-bared roots, a glimpse of slab, smooth, hard, and black.