edgewise through a window. We mortised down an inch into the
flinty oak floor and let in the legs of the old clock so that its top
ornament would just clear the ceiling.

The fireplace problem was more serious. We knew that the chimney was big
enough, for we could look up it at a three-foot square of sky, and our
earlier fires had given us no trouble. We solved the mystery when we
threw open an outside door to let out the smoke. The smoke did not go
out; it rushed back to the big fireplace and went up the chimney, where
it belonged. We understood, then--in the old days air had poured in
through a hundred cracks and crevices. Now we had tightened our walls
and windows until the big chimney could no longer get its breath. It
must have a vent, an air-supply which must come from the outside, yet
not through the room.

Here was a chance for invention. I went down cellar to reflect and
investigate. I decided that a stove-pipe could be carried from a small
cellar window to the old chimney base, and by prying up the thick stone
hearth we could excavate beneath it a passage which would admit the pipe
to one end of the fireplace, where it could be covered and made sightly
by a register. Old Pop came with his crowbar and pick, and Westbury
brought the galvanized pipe and the grating. It was quite a strenuous
job while it lasted, but it was the salvation of our big fireplace, and
I was so proud of the result that I did not greatly mind the mashed foot
I got through Old Pop's allowing the thousand-pound stone hearth to rest
on it while he attended to another matter.

I have given the details of this non-smoke device because any one buying
and repairing an old house is likely to be smoked out and might not
immediately stumble upon the simple remedy. I know when later, at the
club, I explained it to an architectural friend, he confessed that the
notion had not occurred to him, adding, with some shame, that he had
more than once left a considerable crack under a door as an air-supply.
Imagine!

So these troubles passed, and others in kind and variety. Those were
busy days. We were doing so many things, we hardly had time to enjoy the
fall scenery, the second stage of it, as it were, when the goldenrod and
queen's-lace-handkerchief were gone, the blue wild asters fading, and
leaves beginning to fall, though the hilltops were still ablaze with
crimson and gold. Once we stole an afternoon and climbed a ridge that
looked across a valle