A wandering man finds an abandoned near-finished stone house, and asks a villager what happened...

Forty years before a young coquettish girl named Juliet, draws the boys in a small village after her, and along the way a rich Colonel, whose love for her reaches farther than anyone would have expected. She also hooks a fiery, unstable man named Orrin. Both men are determined to have Juliet. The Colonel gets her to swear she will marry him as soon as he finishes a stone house for her, while Orrin tries something secretive to win his love. The narrator is a former lover of Juliet, and perhaps he is not the most partial of observers, but what he tells of is a twisted tale of a selfish woman and an evil man, decide for yourself which man is the villain ...