am I intruding and breaking up plans? Why
didn't you tell me?"

So we went out through the sweet-smelling twilight, or rather the glow
that comes before it, and as we idly sipped the coffee, lo and behold,
the old farm lay before us--a dream picture painted by the twilight! The
little window-panes, iridescent with age and bulged into odd shapes by
yielding sashes, caught the sunset hues and turned to fire opals; the
light mist rising over the green meadows where the flowers now slept
with heads bent and eyes closed lent the green and pearl tints of those
mysterious gems to which drops of rain or dew strung everywhere made
diamond settings.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Bart, "how beautiful the Opie farm looks to-night!
If a real-estate agent could only get a photograph of what we see, we
should soon have a neighbour to rescue the place!"

"You mustn't call it the Opie farm any more; it is Opal Farm from
to-night!" I cried, "and no one shall buy it unless they promise to
leave in the old windows and let the meadow and crab orchard stay as
they are, besides giving me right of way through it quite down to the
river woods!"

But to get back by this circuitous route to the threatened danger with
which I opened this letter--

The postman whistled, as he has an alluring way of doing when he brings
the evening mail, always hoping that some one will come out for a bit of
evening gossip, in which he is rarely disappointed.

We all started to our feet, but Maria, whose special duty it had become
to look over the mail, distanced us all by taking a short cut,
regardless of wet grass.

Talk branched into divers pleasant ways, and we had almost forgotten her
errand when she returned and, breaking abruptly into the conversation,
said to Bart, "Sorry to interrupt, but the postman reports that there
are three large crates of live stock down at the station, and the agent
says will you please send for them to-night, as he doesn't dare leave
them out, there are so many strangers about, and they will surely stifle
if he crowds them into the office!"

"Live stock!" exclaimed Bart, "I'm sure I've bought nothing!" Then, as
light broke in his brain,--"Maybe it's that setter pup that Truesdale
promised me as soon as it was weaned, which would be about now!"

"Would a setter pup come in three crates?" inquired _The Man_, solemnly.

"It must be live plants and not live stock!" I said, coming to Bart's
rescue, "for Aunt Lavinia Cortright wrote