9

ILLUSTRATIONS

_Once more it was a habitation and a home_ _Frontispiece_

_"And here is your house," said William C.
Westbury_ 6

_They formed a board of appraisal. All of them
knew that cellar and were intimately acquainted
with its contents_ 44

_I made about three leaps and grabbed it, and a
second later had it hooked and was back,
the lightning at my heels_ 68

_Sometimes at the end of the day, as I sat by
the waning embers, and watched her moving
to and fro between me and the fading
autumn fields_ 110

_"Good afternoon," I said. "Can you tell us
where we are?"_ 156

_I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic
summer, and, on the whole, a
successful one_ 206

_It was on a winter evening that I drove our
car back to its old place in the barn, after
its long journeyings by land and sea_ 238

CHAPTER ONE

I

_All my life I had dreamed of owning a brook_

[Illustration]

Just below the brow of the hill one of the traces broke (it was in the
horse-and-wagon days of a dozen years or so ago), and, if our driver had
not been a prompt man our adventure might have come to grief when it was
scarcely begun. As it was, we climbed on foot to the top, and waited
while he went into a poor old wreck of a house to borrow a string for
repairs.

We wondered if the house we were going to see would be like this one. It
was of no special design and it had never had a period. It was just a
house, built out of some one's urgent need and a lean purse. In the
fifty years or so of its existence it had warped and lurched and become
sway-backed and old--oh, so old and dilapidated--without becoming in the
least antique, but just dismal and disreputable--a veritable pariah of
architecture. We thought this too bad, for the situation, with its view
down a little valley and in the distance the hazy hills, was the sort of
thing that, common as it is in Connecticut, never loses its charm. Never
mind, we said, perhaps "our house" would have a view, too.

But then our trace was mended and we went