addition built on through generations by many men and women. Here lay
the history, unread, of the family of Roger Gale. Inside there were steps
up and down from one part to another, queer crooks in narrow passageways.
The lower end was attached to the woodshed, and the woodshed to the barn.
Above the house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood
of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the
family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept
around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the
house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond.
At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was
peace for Roger's soul. The next day at dawn he awakened, and through the
window close by his bed he saw no tall confining walls; his eye was carried
as on wings out over a billowy blanket of mist, soft and white and cool and
still, reaching over the valley. From underneath to his sensitive ears came
the numberless voices of the awakening sleepers there, cheeps and tremulous
warbles from the birch copse just below, cocks crowing in the valley, and
ducks and geese, dogs, sheep and cattle faintly heard from distant farms.
Just so it had been when he was a boy. How unchanged and yet how new were
these fresh hungry cries of life. From the other end of the house he heard
Edith's tiny son lustily demanding his breakfast, as other wee boys before
him had done for over a hundred years, as other babies still unborn would
do in the many years to come. Soon the cry of the child was hushed. Quiet
fell upon the house. And Roger sank again into deep happy slumber.

Here was nothing new and disturbing. Edith's children? Yes, they were new,
but they were not disturbing. Their growth each summer was a joy, a renewal
of life in the battered old house. Here was no huge tenement family
crowding in with dirty faces, clamorous demands for aid, but only five
delightful youngsters, clean and fresh, of his own blood. He loved the
small excitements, the plans and plots and discoveries, the many adventures
that filled their days. He spent hours with their mother, listening while
she talked of them. Edith did so love this place and she ran the house so
beautifully. It was so cool and fragrant, so clean and so old-fashioned.

Deborah, too, came under the spell. She grew as lazy as a cat and day by
day renewed her strength from the