s still empty."

"Of course," replied Agatha, impatient to be moving. "It is almost a
ruin."

"Then let us go there, by all means," said Miss Wilson, not disposed to
stand on trifles at the risk of a bad cold.

They hurried on, and came presently to a green hill by the wayside. On
the slope was a dilapidated Swiss cottage, surrounded by a veranda on
slender wooden pillars, about which clung a few tendrils of withered
creeper, their stray ends still swinging from the recent wind, now
momentarily hushed as if listening for the coming of the rain. Access
from the roadway was by a rough wooden gate in the hedge. To the
surprise of Agatha, who had last seen this gate off its hinges and only
attached to the post by a rusty chain and padlock, it was now rehung and
fastened by a new hasp. The weather admitting of no delay to consider
these repairs, she opened the gate and hastened up the slope, followed
by the troop of girls. Their ascent ended with a rush, for the rain
suddenly came down in torrents.

When they were safe under the veranda, panting, laughing, grumbling, or
congratulating themselves on having been so close to a place of shelter,
Miss Wilson observed, with some uneasiness, a spade--new, like the hasp
of the gate--sticking upright in a patch of ground that someone had
evidently been digging lately. She was about to comment on this sign
of habitation, when the door of the chalet was flung open, and Jane
screamed as a man darted out to the spade, which he was about to carry
in out of the wet, when he perceived the company under the veranda, and
stood still in amazement. He was a young laborer with a reddish-brown
beard of a week's growth. He wore corduroy trousers and a linen-sleeved
corduroy vest; both, like the hasp and spade, new. A coarse blue shirt,
with a vulgar red-and-orange neckerchief, also new, completed his dress;
and, to shield himself from the rain, he held up a silk umbrella with
a silver-mounted ebony handle, which he seemed unlikely to have come by
honestly. Miss Wilson felt like a boy caught robbing an orchard, but she
put a bold face on the matter and said:

"Will you allow us to take shelter here until the rain is over?"

"For certain, your ladyship," he replied, respectfully applying the
spade handle to his hair, which was combed down to his eyebrows.
"Your ladyship does me proud to take refuge from the onclemency of the
yallovrments beneath my 'umble rooftree." His accent was barbarous; a