"Oh, we'll see about that! Ta-ta!" cried the others, as they started at a fair pace down the hill.

The road was certainly the most winding of any they had attempted to trace that afternoon. It twisted like a cork-screw between high banks, then hiding beneath a steep crag plunged suddenly through a small fir wood, and crossed the river by a stone bridge. The girls had descended at a jog trot, trying to take their bearings as they went. Owing to the great height of the banks it was impossible to see what was below, therefore it was only when they had passed the wood that they noticed for the first time an old grey house on the farther side of the bridge. It was built so close to the stream that its long veranda actually overhung the water, which[57] swept swirling against the lower wall of the building. Many years must have passed since it last held a tenant, for creepers stretched long tendrils over the broken windows, and grass grew green in the gutters. The dilapidated gate, the weed-grown garden, the weather-worn, paintless woodwork, the damp-stained walls, the damaged roof, all gave it an air of almost indescribable melancholy, so utterly abandoned, deserted, and entirely neglected did it appear.

[57]

"Hallo! Why, this must be 'Forster's Folly'!" exclaimed Barbara. "I'd no idea we were so close to it. We couldn't see even the chimneys from the windmill."

"What an extraordinary name for an even more extraordinary house!" said Deirdre. "Who in the name of all that's weird was 'Forster'? And why is this rat's-hall-looking place called his folly?"

"He was a lawyer in the neighbourhood, I believe, and, like some lawyers, just a little bit too sharp. It was when the railway was going to be made. He heard it was coming this way, and he calculated it would just have to cut across this piece of land, so he bought the field and built this house on it in a tremendous hurry, because he thought he could claim big compensation from the railway company; and then after all they took the line round by Avonporth instead, five miles away, and didn't want to buy his precious house, so he'd had all the trouble and expense for nothing."

"Served him right!" grunted the girls.

"They say he was furious," continued Barbara.[58] "He was so disgusted that he never even painted the woodwork or laid out the garden properly. He tried to let it, but nobody wanted it; so he was obliged to come and live in it himself for economy's sake. He was 

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