reet, already muffled by the snow, added to its quietude a
frozen hush where the wonder-bearing youth pursued his course along its
white, straight way. None was there in whom impertinence overmastered
astonishment, or who recovered from the sight in time to jeer with
effect; no "Trab's boy" gathered courage to enact in the thoroughfare a
scene of mockery and of joy. Leaving business at a temporary
stand-still behind him, Mr. Bantry swept his long coat steadily over
the snow and soon emerged upon that part of the street where the mart
gave way to the home. The comfortable houses stood pleasantly back
from the street, with plenty of lawn and shrubbery about them; and
often, along the picket-fences, the laden branches of small cedars,
bending low with their burden, showered the young man's swinging
shoulders glitteringly as he brushed by.

And now that expression he wore--the indulgent amusement of a man of
the world--began to disintegrate and show signs of change. It became
finely grave, as of a high conventionality, lofty, assured, and
mannered, as he approached the Pike mansion. (The remotest stranger
must at once perceive that the Canaan papers could not have called it
otherwise without pain.)

It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the 'Seventies,
frowning under an outrageously insistent mansard, capped by a cupola,
and staring out of long windows overtopped with "ornamental" slabs.
Two cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mould, stood
on opposite sides of the front walk, their backs towards it and each
other, their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent,
however, so that they gazed upon the passer-by--yet gazed without
emotion. Two large, calm dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to
the front-door; they also were twins and of the same interesting metal,
though honored beyond the deer by coats of black paint and shellac. It
was to be remarked that these dogs were of no distinguishable species
or breed, yet they were unmistakably dogs; the dullest must have
recognized them as such at a glance, which was, perhaps, enough. It
was a hideous house, important-looking, cold, yet harshly aggressive, a
house whose exterior provoked a shuddering guess of the brass
lambrequins and plush fringes within; a solid house, obviously--nay,
blatantly--the residence of the principal citizen, whom it had grown to
resemble, as is the impish habit of houses; and it sat in the middle of