ow-ceilinged, old-fashioned
and delightful. Bobby loved it and its explorations, from the cellar
with its bins of vegetables and fruit and its barrels of molasses, cider
and vinegar, to its attic with its black, mysterious, "behind the tank."
And the three acres were a joy. Outside the picket fence were the shade
trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the
wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn
with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the
"Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as
into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver
bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant
haunt of birds and butterflies innumerable; and the round flower bed;
and the horse-chestnut tree whose inedible brown-and-yellow nuts were
just right to throw or to string into necklaces; and close by the front
gate the Big Tree. Bobby firmly believed this the largest tree in the
world. It was a silver maple so great about the trunk that Bobby could
trot about it as around a race-track. At twelve feet it branched in two,
each division bigger than any shade tree in town. The branches were held
together by a logging chain. Above them were more divisions and more and
yet more, ever rising higher and finer, until at last, far over the tops
of the maples, of the elms, even of the hickory at the side of the
house, above the highest point of the highest gable of the house itself,
it feathered out in a delicate, wide lacework that seemed fairly to
brush the sky. Bobby's realization of height ceased short of the
reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too
great speed. The big tree was full of orioles' and vireos' nests, old
and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was
the orchard, a dozen sturdy old apple trees, now passing the meridian of
their powers.

Here Bobby laboured hard with hammers and a few old boards until he had
constructed a shield on which to tack his target. He leaned the affair
against the thickest and tallest woodpile, placed a saw-horse for a rest
at fifteen yards from his mark and brought out his Flobert Rifle.

At the third snap of the little weapon, he looked up to discover a row
of interested heads lined up along the top of the high board fence that
constituted the Ordes' eastern boundary. He pretended not to see but
shot again, ve