“And I’ll go treasure-hunting,” said I, pausing only long enough to snatch up my hat.

“Well, good luck, Biffkins,” Dick called after me, and started back toward the barn, leaving me alone at the front door, intent on the problem.

The first thing to do, I felt, was to make a survey of the house and grounds, and this I found to be no little task. Indeed, I soon became so absorbed in their beauty that I nearly forgot the puzzle I had set myself to solve. Let me describe the place as well as I can, and you will not wonder that, as the days went on, the prospect of losing it should become more and more dreadful to me.

The house was of red brick, square, in a style [Pg 50]which I have since been told is Georgian. In the middle front was a portico, stone-floored, with four white columns supporting its roof, and with an iron railing curving along either side of its wide stone steps, five in number. The front door was heavily panelled, and bore a great brass knocker. A wide hall ran through the centre of the house, with the rooms opening from it on either side—large, square rooms, with lofty ceilings, and heated either by means of wide fire-places or Franklin stoves. But of the interior of the house I shall speak again—it was the exterior which first claimed my attention.

[Pg 50]

It stood well back from the road, in a grove of stately elms, which must have been planted at the time the house was built, nearly three quarters of a century before. A beautiful lawn, flanked by hedges of hardy shrubs, sloped down to the road, and to the right of the house, surrounded by a close-clipped hedge of box, was a flower garden laid out in a queer, formal fashion which I had never seen before. It looked desolate and neglected, but here and there the compelling sun of spring had brought out a tinge of green. Beyond the garden was a high brick wall, covered with vines, shutting us off from the view of our neighbours.

[Pg 51]

[Pg 51]

Back of the house was the kitchen garden, nearly an acre in extent, and surrounded by rows of raspberry and currant bushes. Along one side of it was a double grape-arbour, separating it from the orchard. Cherries and peaches were putting on their bridal robes of white and pink, and as I passed beneath their branches, drinking deep draughts of the fragrant air, I could hear the bees, just awakened from their winter sleep, busy among the petals. Near a sheltering 

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