in the doorway, backed up by a servant and
two pretty children who clung, half-curious, half-frightened, to the
lady's skirts.

"Why, Miss Elizabeth! Is it possible--"

But Elizabeth cut the speech of the astonished lady short.

"Yes, my dear Mrs. Babcock,--and I know how dangerous, and all that!
And, thank you, I'll not come in. I shall see you during the week. I'm
going to the manor-house to stay awhile, and I wish my aunt to stay
there with me, if you can spare her."

"Why, yes,--of course,--but--here comes your aunt."

"Why, Elizabeth, what in the world--"

She was a somewhat stately woman at first sight, was Elizabeth's
mother's sister, Miss Sarah Williams; but on acquaintance soon
conciliated and found to be not at all the formidable and haughty
person she would have had people believe her; not too far gone in
middle age, preserving, despite her spinsterhood, much of her bloom
and many of those little roundnesses of contour which adorn but do not
encumber.

"I haven't time to say what, aunt," broke in Elizabeth. "I want to get
to the manor-house before it is night. You are to stay with me there a
week. So put on a wrap and come over as soon as you can, to be in
time for supper. I'll send a boy for you, if you like."

"Why, no, there's some one here will walk over with me, I dare say.
But, la me, Elizabeth,--"

"Then I'll look for you in five minutes. Good night, Mrs. Babcock! I
trust your little ones are well."

And she rode off, followed by Colden and Cuff, leaving the two women
in the parsonage doorway to exchange what conjectures and what
ejaculations of wonderment the circumstances might require.

Night was falling when the riders crossed the Neperan (then commonly
known as the Saw Mill River) by the post-road bridge, and gazed more
closely on the stone manor-house. Looking westward, from the main
road, across the hedge and paling fence, they saw, first the vast lawn
with its comely trees, then the long east front of the house, with its
two little entrance-porches, the row of windows in each of its two
stories, the dormer windows projecting from the sloping roof, the
balustraded walk on the roof-top; at both ends the green and brown and
yellow hints of what lay north of the house, between it and the
forest, and west of the house, between it and the Hudson,--the
box-hedged gardens, the terraces breaking the slope to the river, the
deer paddock enclosed by high pickets, the great orchard. The Hudso