practical young man. But anyhow he slowed his car down and looked at the place intently as he passed by. He was convinced that this was the place. He did not need to go on and find Allister Avenue—though he did, and then turned back again, stopping by the roadside. He got out of the car, looking all the time at the barn and seeing it in the light of the girl's eyes. As he walked up the grassy slope to the front doors, he had some conception of what it must be to live so that this would seem grand as a home. And he showed he was not spoiled by his life in the lap of luxury, for he was able to get a glimpse of the grandeur of the spot and the dignity of the building with its long simple lines and rough old stones. 

 The sun was just going down as he stood there looking up. It touched the stones, and turned them into jewelled settings, glorifying the old structure into a palace. The evening was sweet with the voices of birds not far away. One above the rest, clear and occasional, high in the elm-tree over the barn, a wood-thrush spilling its silver notes down to the brook that echoed them back in a lilt. The young man took off his hat and stood in the evening air, listening and looking. He could see the poetry of it, and somehow he could see the girl's face as if she stood there beside him, her wonderful eyes lighted as they had been when she told him how beautiful it was there. She was right. It was beautiful, and it was a lovely soul that could see it and feel what a home this would make in spite of the ignominy of its being nothing but a barn. Some dim memory, some faint remembrance, of a stable long ago, and the glory of it, hovered on the horizon of his mind; but his education had not been along religious lines, and he did not put the thing into a definite thought. It was just a kind of sensing of a great fact of the universe which he perhaps might have understood in a former existence. 

 Then he turned to the building itself. He was practical, after all, even if he was a dreamer. He tried the big padlock. How did they get into this thing? How had the girl got in? Should he be obliged to break into his own barn? 

 He walked down the slope, around to the back, and found the entrance close to the ladder; but the place was quite dark within the great stone walls, and he peered into the gloomy basement with disgust at the dirt and murk. Only here and there, where a crack looked toward the setting sun, a bright needle of light sent a shaft through to let one see the inky shadows. He was half turning back, but reflected that the girl had said she went up a ladder to the middle floor. If she 

 Prev. P 28/208 next