visitants
in his mind. Sometimes the mind seemed to him a clean-swept place, the
shades down and no fire lighted, and these young creatures, in their
heavenly implication of doing everything for their own pleasure and not
for his, would come in, pull up the shades with a rush, light the fire
and sit down with their sewing and their quite as necessary laughter by
the hearth.

"It's a nice brick wall," said Anne, in her cool clear voice. "It
doesn't seem so much to shut other people out as to shut us in."

She slipped her hand through the colonel's arm, and they both stood
there at his elbow like rosy champions, bound to stick to him to the
last, and the bird sang and something eased up in his mind. He seemed to
be let off, in this spring twilight, from an exigent task that had shown
no signs of easing. Yet he knew he was not really let off. Only the
girls were throwing their glamour of youth and hope and bravado over the
apprehensive landscape of his fortune as to-morrow's sun would snatch a
rosier light from the apple blooms.

"My great-grandfather built the wall," said he. He was content to go
back to an older reminiscent time when there were, for him, no roads of
gloom. "He was a minister, you know: very old-fashioned even then, very
direct, knew what he wanted, saw no reason why he shouldn't have it. He
wanted a place to meditate in, walk up and down, think out his sermons.
So he built the wall. The townspeople didn't take to it much at first,
father used to say. But they got accustomed to it. He wouldn't care."

"There's a grape-vine over a trellis," said Anne softly. She spoke in a
rapt way, as if she had said, "There are angels choiring under the
trees. We can hum their songs."

"It makes an arbour. Farvie'll sit there and read his Greek," said
Lydia. "We can't leave this place to-night. It would be ridiculous, now
we've found it. It wouldn't be safe either. Places like this bust up and
blow away."

"We can get up the beds to-morrow," said Anne. "Then we never'll leave
it for a single minute as long as we live. I want to go ever the house.
Farvie, can't we go over the house?"

They went up the rotten steps, Lydia with a last proprietary look at
the orchard, as if she sealed it safe from all the spells of night, and
entered at the front door, trying, at her suggestion, to squeeze in
together three abreast, so they could own it equally. It was a still,
kind house. The last light lay sweetly in the room at t