weed-ridden. The farmers never had time to plow clear to the corners and turn plumb. The soil had as many stones as it had had twenty years before. The whole countryside was suffering from lack of ambition. Crops were small, and food and clothes were meager. The stock showed the same attributes. It was stunted, dwarfed, far from its natural efficiency in burden bearing, milk-giving or egg-laying.

There was one place not quite like this—the old Wells place at the cross roads. The house was neither so large, nor so rambling as the others. It stood deep among some old purple beeches, and in summer it had yellow roses clambering over one entire side. The color was peculiar, and marked its occupant and owner just a little different from other people in the community. Everyone conceded that point without a question. She was just a little different. The house was all in shades of golden brown; brown that suggested yellow when the sun shone. It was a color that not a man in Shintown or a painter at the Bend or Port would have thought of putting on a house. Who ever thought of painting a house anything but white with green shutters or a good, serviceable drab? Golden browns in several shades! Why, of course, the woman must be peculiar. She did the work herself too. She arose at daylight to paint the upper portion and she quit work when travel on the highway began.

That was another peculiarity which the countryside could not understand; a woman who could be independent enough to choose what color she would, in defiance of all set laws, and yet afraid to let folks see her climbing a ladder to the second story.

If peculiar means being different, Eliza Wells was that. She was thirty, and never blushed at it. She had even been known to mention her birthdays as “I was twenty-nine yesterday. How time does fly!” And she said it after the manner of one who might have said, “To-morrow I set the old Plymouth Rock on a settin’ of Dominick eggs.”

But the country folk were kind enough and overlooked her not being as themselves. There was a knowing smile now and then, a sage nodding of the head. Now and then someone went as far as to say, “That’s Liza’s way. She never did act like other folks.”

Eliza knew she was peculiar and tried her best to be like those about her. She had never known any other kind of people; for she had been born and bred in the little place. But do as she could, her own self would break loose every now and then. In spite of her effort to be like other people, there were times when she could be nothing but her own 

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