, where one could rest upon the rustic seat and
enjoy the ever-varying picture of water, sky, and shore.

[Illustration: RIVERWARD FRONT OF BRANDON.]

But we turned our backs upon it all, for to us it was not yet Brandon.
Now, our course lay directly away from the river along a broad avenue
of yielding turf, straight through an aged garden. Above were the
arching boughs of giant trees; below and all about, a wealth of
old-fashioned bloom. The sunlight drifted through shadowing
fringe-trees, mimosas, magnolias, and oaks. Hoary old age marked the
garden in the breadth of the box, in the height of the slow-growing
yews, and in the denseness of the ivy that swathed the great-girthed
trees. It all lay basking in the soft, mellow light of sunset, in the
hush of coming twilight, like some garden of sleep.

Suddenly, the grove and the garden ended and we were over the threshold
of a square of sward, an out-of-door reception room, no tree or shrub
encroaching. Beyond this was a row of sentinel trees; and then a
massive hedge of box with a break in the middle where stood the white
portal of Brandon. We could tell little about the building. The eye
could catch only a charming confusion: foliage-broken lines of wall and
roof; ivy-framed windows; and, topping all, just above the deep green
of a magnolia tree, the white carved pineapple of welcome and
hospitality.

In the softened light of evening, the charm of the place was upon
us--old Brandon, standing tree-shadowed and dim, its storied walls in
time-toned tints, its seams and crannies traced in the greens of moss
and lichen, its ancient air suggestive, secretive,

"In green old gardens hidden away
From sight of revel and sound of strife."

We entered a large, dusky hall with white pillars and arches midway,
and with two rooms opening off from it--the dining-room on the one
hand, the drawing-room on the other. In the old chimney-pieces, fire
leaped behind quaint andirons taking the chill from the evening air.

And there in the dusk and the fire-glow, where shadows half hid and
half revealed, where old mahogany now loomed dark and now flashed back
the flickering light, where old-time worthies fitfully came and went
upon the shadowy, panelled walls--we made our acquaintance with Brandon
and with the gracious lady of the manor. Our talk ran one with the hour
and the dusk and the firelight--old days, old ways, and all that
Brandon stands for.

When our twilight call