e on his right, near the head of Collect Street.
Perhaps that quizzical little old German was right, who had told him
that King's Bridge property was a rational investment.

He went across the hill where Grand Street crosses Broadway, and up past
what was then North and is to-day Houston Street, and then turned down a
straggling road that ran east and west. He walked toward the Hudson, and
passed a farmhouse or two, and came to a bare place where there were no
trees, and only a few tangled bushes and ground-vines.

Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting him. As he came near, the
man arose.

"Ah, it's you, Weeks? And have you the plan?"

"Yes, Colonel--Mr. Dolph. I've put the window where you want it--that
is, my brother Levi did--though I don't see as you're going to have much
trouble in looking over anything that's likely to come between you and
the river."

[Illustration]

Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment and studied it with loving
interest. It had gone back to Ezra Weeks, the builder, and his brother
Levi, the architect, for the twentieth time, perhaps. Was there ever an
architect's plan put in the hands of a happy nest-builder where the
windows did not go up and down from day to day, and the doors did not
crawl all around the house, and the veranda did not contract and expand
like a sensitive plant; or where the rooms and closets and corridors did
not march backward and forward and in and out at the bidding of every
fond, untutored whim?

"It's a monstrous great big place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph," said
Ezra Weeks, as he looked over Jacob Dolph's shoulder at the drawings of
the house, and shook his head with a sort of pitying admiration for the
projector's audacity.

They talked for a while, and looked at the site as if they might see
more in it than they saw yesterday, and then Weeks set off for the city,
pledged to hire laborers and to begin the work on the morrow.

"I think I can get you some of that stone that's going into the back of
the City Hall, if you say so, Mr. Dolph. That stone was bought cheap,
you know--bought for the city."

"See what you can do, Weeks," said Mr. Dolph; and Mr. Weeks went
whistling down the road.

Jacob Dolph walked around his prospective domain. He kicked a wild
blackberry bush aside, to look at the head of a stake, and tried to
realize that that would be the corner of his house. He went to where the
parlor fireplace would be, and stared at the gras