. She had never realized that the decline of
the family's fortune had been, in no small measure, due to her. She
accounted for it on the grounds of old Mr. Thomas Prescott's inhuman
stubbornness and selfishness.

The two girls, leaving the village behind them, were walking briskly
through the rain, down the main road, bordered by the imposing country
estates of people who had gradually settled on the pretty countryside.
Nancy could remember when the hill, where now stood a staring white
stone mansion, surrounded by close-clipped lawns and trim gardens, had
been a wild, lovely swell of meadow, dotted with clusters of oaks and
elms; when in place of the smug little bungalow, with its artificial
pond and waterfall, and ornate stone fences, there had been a wooded
copse, where squirrels scuttled about among branches of trees, since
fallen in the path of a moneyed civilization. Other of the houses, of
haughty Mansard architecture, had stood there before she had been born,
and it had often seemed to her that the huge, solemn, beautiful old
place of Mr. Thomas Prescott had been there since the Creation. As
they passed it, they slackened their pace, and despite the weight of
bundles which grew heavier every minute, stopped and peered through the
bars of the great, wrought-iron gates.

A broad drive, meticulously raked and weeded, wound away from them
under magnificent arching trees, to the portals--Nancy said it would
have been impossible to consider Uncle Thomas's door anything but a
portal--which were just visible under the low-hanging branches. The
rest of the old stone house was screened from the rude gaze of prying
eyes, like the face of a faded dowager of the harem; save for the upper
half of a massive Norman tower, which thrust itself up out of the nest
of green leaves, like the neck of some inquisitive, prehistoric bird.

"I don't believe Uncle Thomas has passed through these gates in fifteen
years," said Nancy. "One could almost believe that he had really died
and had had himself buried on the grounds, like the eccentric old
recluse he is."

"Well, they would have had to have done something with all his money,"
replied Alma, pressing her forehead against the iron bars; "unless he
left everything to his butler, and had the will read in secret. It
would be just like him. Oh, Nancy, why are there such selfish old
misers in the world? Just think--if he'd just give us the least little
bit of all his money. Jus