ne, though rather watery,
after the fashion of South-of-England suns, was real sunshine still, and
glinted and glittered bravely on the dew-soaked fields about Copplestone
Grange.

This was an ancient house of red brick, dating back to the last half of
the sixteenth century, and still bearing testimony in its sturdy bulk to
the honest and durable work put upon it by its builders. Not a joist had
bent, not a girder started in the long course of its two hundred and odd
years of life. The brick-work of its twisted chimney-stacks was intact,
and the stone carving over its doorways and window frames; only the
immense growth of the ivy on its side walls attested to its age. It
takes longer to build ivy five feet thick than many castles, and though
new masonry by trick and artifice may be made to look like old, there is
no secret known to man by which a plant or tree can be induced to
simulate an antiquity which does not rightfully belong to it.
Innumerable sparrows and tomtits had built in the thick mats of the old
ivy, and their cries and twitters blended in shrill and happy chorus as
they flew in and out of their nests.

The Grange had been a place of importance, in Queen Elizabeth's time, as
the home of an old Devon family which was finally run out and
extinguished. It was now little more than a superior sort of farm-house.
The broad acres of meadow and pleasaunce and woodland which had given it
consequence in former days had been gradually parted with, as
misfortunes and losses came to its original owners. The woods had been
felled, the pleasure grounds now made part of other people's farms, and
the once wide domain had contracted, until the ancient house stood with
only a few acres about it, and wore something the air of an old-time
belle who has been forcibly divested of her ample farthingale and
hooped-petticoat, and made to wear the scant kirtle of a village maid.

Orchards of pear and apple flanked the building to east and west. Behind
was a field or two crowning a little upland where sedate cows fed
demurely; and in front, toward the south, which was the side of
entrance, lay a narrow walled garden, with box-bordered beds full of
early flowers, mimulus, sweet-peas, mignonette, stock gillies, and blush
and damask roses, carefully tended and making a blaze of color on the
face of the bright morning. The whole front of the house was draped with
a luxuriant vine of Gloire de Dijon, whose long, pink-yellow buds and
cr