hate swelled from end to end of the Valley; and it refused to ebb.

These Aura folk were Americans of Puritan stock—a race to whom sabotage and arson are foreign. Thus they did not seek to destroy or even to hamper the work at Vailholme. But their aloofness was made as bitter and blighting as a Bible prophet’s curse. For example:

[14]When his great house was but half built, Osmun ran up from New York, one gray January Saturday afternoon, to inspect the job. This he did every few weeks. And, on his tours, he made headquarters at Plum’s, in Stockbridge, six miles away. This was an ancient and honorable hostelry which some newfangled folk were even then beginning to call “The Red Lion Inn,” and whose food was one of Life’s Compensations. Thence, on a livery nag, Vail was wont to ride out to his estate.

[14]

On this January trip Osmun found that Plum’s had closed, at Christmas, for the season. He drove on to Aura, only to find the village’s one inn was shut for repairs. Planning to continue his quest of lodgings as far as Lenox or, if necessary, to Pittsfield, Osmun went up, through a snowstorm, to his uncompleted hilltop mansion of Vailholme.

He had brought along a lunch, annexed from the Stockbridge bakery. So interested did he become in wandering from one unceilinged room to another, and furnishing and refurnishing them in his mind, that he did not notice the steady increase of the snowfall and of the wind which whipped it into fury.

By the time he went around to the shed, at[15] the rear of the house, where he had stabled the livery horse, he could scarce see his hand before his face. The gale was hurling the tons of snow from end to end of the Valley, in solid masses. There was no question of holding the road or even of finding it. The horse knew that—and he snorted, and jerked back on the bit when Osmun essayed to lead him from shelter.

[15]

Every minute, the blizzard increased.

The corps of indoor laborers and their bosses had gone to their Pittsfield quarters, for Sunday. Osmun had the deserted place to himself. Swathed in his greatcoat and in a mountain of burlap, and burrowing into a bed of torn papers and paint-blotched wall-cloths, he made shift to pass a right miserable night.

By dawn the snowfall had ceased. But so had the Valley’s means of entrance and of exit. The 

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