is my wife," said he.

A woman stood there facing me. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "Mr. Grayson!"

I recalled swiftly a child--a child she seemed then--with braids down
her back, whom I had known when I first came to my farm. She had grown
up, married, and had borne three children, while I had been looking the
other way for a minute or two. She had not been in our neighborhood for
several years.

"And how is your sister and Doctor McAlway?"

Well, we had quite a wonderful visit, she made breakfast for me, asking
and talking eagerly as I ate.

"We've just had news that old Mr. Toombs is dead."

"Dead!" I exclaimed, dropping my fork; "old Nathan Toombs!"

"Yes, he was my uncle. Did you know him?"

"I knew Nathan Toombs," I said.

I spent two days there with the Ransomes, for they would not hear of my
leaving, and half of our spare time, I think, was spent in discussing
Nathan Toombs. I was not able to get him out of my mind for days, for
his death was one of those events which prove so much and leave so much
unproven.

I can recall vividly my astonishment at the first evidence I ever had of
the strange old man or of his work. It was not very long after I came
to my farm to live. I had taken to spending my spare evenings--the long
evenings of summer--in exploring the country roads for miles around,
getting acquainted with each farmstead, each bit of grove and meadow and
marsh, making my best bow to each unfamiliar hill, and taking everywhere
that toll of pleasure which comes of quiet discovery.

One evening, having walked farther than usual, I came quite suddenly
around a turn in the road and saw stretching away before me an
extraordinary sight.

I feel that I am conveying no adequate impression of what I beheld
by giving it any such prim and decorous name as--a Hedge. It was a
menagerie, a living, green menagerie! I had no sooner seen it than I
began puzzling my brain as to whether one of the curious ornaments into
which the upper part of the hedge had been clipped and trimmed was made
to represent the head of a horse, or a camel, or an Egyptian sphinx.

The hedge was of arbor vitae and as high as a man's waist. At more or
less regular intervals the trees in it had been allowed to grow much
taller and had been wonderfully pruned into the similitude of towers,
pinnacles, bells, and many other strange designs. Here and there the
hedge held up a spindling umbrella of greenery, sometimes a double
umbrella--a little on