ndoned, to drop slowly to pieces in the wind and rain. The
grotesque figure, with its outstretched arms and hat set at a rakish
angle, looked familiar for some incomprehensible reason. As Oliver
clung to the wall, squinted through the leaves, and wondered why that
should be, the mystery was suddenly solved. The door of the house
opened with a squeak of rusty hinges and somebody came out on the
step. It was Anthony Crawford. No wonder the scarecrow looked like its
master, for it was wearing his old clothes, garments to which there
always cling a vague resemblance to the person who once wore them.

A child with very yellow hair came running out upon the doorstone,
laughing aloud at some small joke of his very own. When he saw Anthony
Crawford, however, he sobered suddenly and slipped back into the house
without a sound. The man stood upon the step and stared, with
narrowed, penetrating eyes, over toward the wall. The gables and
chimneys of Cousin Jasper's big house must show through the trees from
where he stood and, judging by the look with which he regarded them,
it seemed that he hated the very roof that sheltered Jasper Peyton.
The luxurious mansion was, in truth, a sharp contrast to the unkempt,
gone-to-seed yellow farmhouse, although Oliver wondered whether,
originally, the old stone dwelling had not been the more attractive of
the two.

He leaned forward to see plainer, made an unwise move, and attracted
the attention of the man on the step. The boy flushed scarlet as their
eyes met, for Anthony Crawford, without making a sound, went through a
pantomime of an ecstasy of glee. He had evidently expected to arouse
Oliver's curiosity by his suggestion the day before, and was overcome
with ill-natured delight to catch him in the very act of satisfying
it.

With a mutter of angry words, Oliver dropped back into the garden.

"I wasn't looking just because he told me to--I _wasn't_!" he kept
repeating.

As he walked toward the house he looked back more than once at the
high wall, wondering at the things it hid. Here was squalid poverty
almost under the windows of the great, handsome house where Cousin
Jasper lived with everything that heart could desire. It was the
poverty, too, of a member of his own family. Here was jealous enmity
also, a hatred that seemed to point ominously to trouble before them,
to all the harm that could be accomplished by an angry, unscrupulous
man. No wonder Cousin Jasper looked changed, and