doctor. He was often at home alone for weeks together, except for a man-servant, a foreigner as reserved as himself, whom he had brought with him to Sandy Plain. There was another servant sometimes—a woman—also a foreigner; but when the Paullings were both away a Mrs. Vandeermans, a country dressmaker who lived in a cottage near by, looked after the house, going in occasionally to see that all was well. 

 I asked as many questions as I dared, but learned little; and as soon as dusk had begun to fall I started off in the nondescript vehicle which had returned for me. The driver spent most of the twenty minutes it took him to reach the farm in explaining that it wasn't really a farm except in name. Nothing was left of it but the house and two or three acres of orchard; all the rest had been sold off in lots by the owner before he let it to the Paullings. What "city folks" admired in it was beyond the knowledge of my companion, but when we arrived at the gate and saw the far-off house gleaming white behind a thick screen of ancient apple trees, I realised the attractions of the place, especially for such tenants as I believed the Paullings to be. The farm-house, with its wide clapboarding, its neat green shutters, and its almost classic "colonial" porch hung with roses, had the air of being on terms of long familiar friendship with the old-fashioned garden and the great trees which almost hid it from its neighbours and the road. Its front windows, closed and shuttered now, would look out when open over sloping lawns and flowerbeds to distant blue glints of the sea; and altogether Bayview Farm seemed an ideal retreat for persons who could be sufficient to themselves and each other. 

 Those shuttered windows, however, hinted at disappointment for me. Not a light showed, behind one of them, and when I had rung the bell of the front door, and pounded vainly at the back, I had to make up my mind that the Paullings were either away or determined to be thought so. "Mrs. Vandeermans 'll know all about 'em," my conductor comforted me. "She lives next door, a quarter of a mile farther on." 

 We drove the quarter mile, only to be struck by another blow. The one person at home in Mrs. Vandeermans' cottage was that widowed woman's mother, very old, very deaf, half blind, knowing little about anything, and nothing at all about the tenants of Bayview Farm. 

 "My darter's gone to my son's in Buffalo," she quavered when I had screamed at her.  "He's sick, but she'll be back to-morrow to look after me. She knows them Paullings. You come again to-morrow afternoon if you 

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