ave considered it
somewhat confused; for while it looked like a rude castle to those who
approached it from the hills, it looked like something very different to
those who approached the front, for upon that side was a portico with
massive Doric columns, which were nothing more nor less than maple logs.
Andrew maintained that the natural form of the trunk of a tree was the
ideal and perfect form of a pillar.

To this picturesque structure, half castle, half cabin, with hints of
church and temple, came August Wehle on Saturday evening. He did not go
round to the portico and knock at the front-door as a stranger would
have done, but in behind the donjon chimney he pulled an alarm-cord.
Immediately the head of Andrew Anderson was thrust out of a Gothic
hole--you could not call it a window. His uncut hair, rather darker than
auburn, fell down to his waist, and his shaggy red beard lay upon his
bosom. Instead of a coat he wore that unique garment of linsey-woolsey
known in the West as wa'mus (warm us?), a sort of over-shirt. He was
forty-five, but there were streaks of gray in his hair and board, and he
looked older by ten years.

"What ho, good friend? Is that you?" he cried. "Come up, and right
welcome!" For his language was as archaic and perhaps as incongruous as
his architecture. And then throwing out of the window a rope-ladder, he
called out again, "Ascend! ascend! my brave young friend!"

And young Wehle climbed up the ladder into the large upper room. For it
was one peculiarity of the castle that the upper part had no visible
communication with the lower. Except August, and now and then a literary
stranger, no one but the owner was ever admitted to the upper story of
the house, and the neighbors, who always had access to the lower rooms,
regarded the upper part of the castle with mysterious awe. August was
often plied with questions about it, but he always answered simply that
he didn't think Mr. Anderson would like to have it talked about. For the
owner there must have been some inside mode of access to the second
story, but he did not choose to let even August know of any other way
than that by the rope-ladder, and the few strangers who came to see his
books were taken in by the same drawbridge.

[Illustration: THE CASTLE.]

The room was filled with books arranged after whimsical associations.
One set of cases, for instance, was called the Academy, and into these
he only admitted the masters, following the gu