me of the inhospitable Mr.
Richard van Duyne. He had brought with him a rope ladder, provided with
grappling-hooks, and the mere scaling of the barrier should not present
any great difficulty. It would be well, however, to reconnoitre a little
further before he attempted it.

Following the wall down to the river, he saw that it was continued to
the very edge of the water, where it joined a solidly constructed
sea-wall. There were the remains of a wooden pier running out from the
end of the street proper, and Constans adventured upon its worm-eaten
timbers, intent on obtaining a more extended view of this singular
domain of Arcadia House.

A large and somewhat imposing structure it was, albeit of a curiously
composite order of architecture.

Originally, it must have been a villa of the true Dutch type built of
stuccoed brick, with many-gabled roof and small-paned, deeply embrasured
windows. A subsequent proprietor had enlarged its ground-plan, added an
upper story, and changed the roof to one of flat pitch crowned by a
hideous cupola. Still a third meddler had tried to make it over into a
colonial homestead by painting the stucco white and joining on an
enormous columned porch. The final result could hardly have been
otherwise than an artistic monstrosity, yet the old house had acquired
that certain unanalyzable dignity which time confers, and the gentle
fingers of the years had softened down insistent angles and smoothed out
unlovely curves. It was a house with a soul, for men had lived and died,
rejoiced and suffered within its walls.

A house--and such a house!--set in its own garden amid the incongruous
surroundings of tenement buildings and malodorous gas-works. How to
account for it, what theory could be invented to reconcile facts so
discordant? In reality, the explanation was simple enough; as between
the house and its environment, the former had all the rights of prior
possession. In the early days of the settlement of the city the banks of
the Lesser river had been a favorite place of residence for well-to-do
burghers and merchants. But foot by foot the muddy tide of trade and
utilitarianism had risen about these green water-side Edens; one by one
their quiet-loving owners had been forced farther afield.

Yet now and then the standard of rebellion had been raised; here and
there might be found a Dutchman as stiff-necked as the fate that he
defied. His father and his father's father had lived here upon the