road followed the easiest line of ascent towards this
edifice, and reached a gateway. Within it began to describe a curve
bordered with asphalted footways to the broad verandah of the house, and
then descended again to the gate. The grounds enclosed were planted with
deciduous shrubs, which had now mostly dropped their leaves, and clumps
of firs darkening in the evening light with the gleam of some garden
statues shivering about the lawn next the house. The breeze grew colder
and stiffer as the father and son mounted toward the mansion which Dan
used to believe was like a chateau, with its Mansard-roof and dormer
windows and chimneys. It now blocked its space sharply out of the thin
pink of the western sky, and its lights sparkled with a wintry keenness
which had often thrilled Dan when he climbed the hill from the station
in former homecomings. Their brilliancy gave him a strange sinking
of the heart for no reason. He and his father had kept up a sort of
desultory talk about Alice, and he could not have said that his
father had seemed indifferent; he had touched the affair only too
acquiescently; it was painfully like everything else. When they came in
full sight of the house, Dan left the subject, as he realised presently,
from a reasonless fear of being overheard.

"It seems much later here, sir, than it does in Boston," he said,
glancing round at the maples, which stood ragged, with half their leaves
blown from them.

"Yes; we're in the hills, and we're further north," answered his father.
"There's Minnie."

Dan had seen his sister on the verandah, pausing at sight of him, and
puzzled to make out who was with her father. He had an impulse to hail
her with a shout, but he could not. In his last walk with her he had
told her that he should never marry, and they had planned to live
together. It was a joke; but now he felt as if he had come to rob her of
something, and he walked soberly on with his father.

"Why, Dan, you good-for-nothing fellow!" she called out when he came
near enough to be unmistakable, and ran down the steps to kiss him.
"What in the world are you doing here? When did you come? Why didn't you
hollo, instead of letting me stand here guessing? You're not sick, are
you?"

The father got himself indoors unnoticed in the excitement of the
brother's arrival. This would have been the best moment for Dan to tell
his sister of his engagement; he knew it, but he parried her curiosity
about his coming; a