he wood-robins were beginning
their vespers already. Hanny thought them the sweetest singers she had
ever heard.

Just here there was a terraced garden-spot and an old house adorned with
all kinds of blossoming shrubbery.

"You see we two are guardians of the place, at either end. Miss
Whitney, this house could tell some interesting tales of the bygone
time; but the glory is departing. In a few years the city will stretch
out and invade our solitude."

A wild spot of ground it was below, hilly, gravelly, sloping sharply
down to the river. But people were beginning to take advantage of the
shore-edge for business. There were shops, and a foundry stretching out
smoky, dingy arms in various directions.

They said their good-byes here, as they were in sight of the old
Gouverneur mansion. And no one guessed then that a tragedy of love and
desperation to madness was soon to follow, and that in the dreary old
house "Frank Forrester" was to lie, slain by his own hand, that he waved
so jauntily to them as he bade them "Come again."

They scrambled up the small ascent, and sprang over the wall. Here was
where the Nine Worthies used to come for their merry-making in their
exuberant youth, and, as one of their number said afterward, "enlivened
the solitude by their mad-cap pranks and juvenile orgies." The house had
not been much modernised up to that period. Its young owner, Mr. Kemble,
who was the Patroon of the merry company, still held it. They found the
old honeydew cherry-tree standing; but some of its long-armed branches
were going to decay. The odd, octagonal summer-house had not then fallen
down.

They went up to the old room in the south-western angle, the green
moreen chamber, as it had been called, where the Nine Worthies used to
congregate, and where Irving concocted some choice bits of fun for the
Salamagundi Club. And here was the great drawing-room where they
disposed themselves to sociable naps on Sunday afternoons, the
vine-covered porch on which they sat and smoked starlit evenings, and
the grassy lawn over which they rambled. And now Mr. Washington Irving
had been minister to Spain, and the guest of noted people in England and
on the continent. He had won fame in more than one line, and hosts of
appreciative readers.

Hanny could hardly realise it all, as she thought of the still handsome
though rather delicate man, past middle life, gracious and dignified and
kindly, sitting on his own porch at Sunnysid