ves, and a circle of them round the margin of the pond. Over all the
great Magician of the season had waved his wand, and decked them in
colours dazzling to the eyes accustomed to the grey rocks and purple
heather, and to the russet garb of autumn in their native land.

There were farm-houses too, and the scattered houses along the village
street looking white and fair beneath crimson maples and yellow
beech-trees. Above hung a sky undimmed by a single cloud, and the air
was keen, yet mild with the October sunshine. They could not have had a
lovelier time for the first glimpse of their new home, yet there was an
echo of disappointment in Harry's voice as he asked,--

"Where's the town?"

They had been greatly impressed by the description given them of
Merleville by Mr Sampson Snow, in whose great wagon they had been
conveyed over the twenty miles of country roads that lay between the
railway and their new home.

"I was the first white child born in the town," said Sampson. "I know
every foot of it as well as I do my own barn, and I don't want no better
place to live in than Merleville. It don't lack but a fraction of being
ten miles square. Right in the centre, perhaps a _leetle_ south,
there's about the prettiest pond you ever saw. There are some
first-rate farms there, mine is one of them, but in general the town is
better calculated for pasturage than tillage. I shouldn't wonder but it
would be quite a manufacturing place too after a spell, when they've
used up all the other water privileges in the State. There's quite a
fall in the Merle river, just before it runs into the pond. We've got a
fullin'-mill and a grist-mill on it now. They'd think everything of it
in your country."

"There's just one meetin'-house in it. That's where your pa'll preach
if our folks conclude to hire him a spell. The land's about all taken
up, though it hain't reached the highest point of cultivation yet. The
town is set off into nine school-districts, and I consider that our
privileges are first-rate. And if it's nutting and squirrel-hunting
you're after, boys, all you have to do is to apply to Uncle Sampson, and
he'll arrange your business for you."

"Ten miles square and nine school-districts!" Boston could be nothing
to it, surely, the boys thought. The inconsistency of talking about
pasturage and tillage, nutting and squirrel-hunting in the populous
place which they imagined Merleville to be, did not strike them