banks while the Beeman
listened and nodded gravely.

"That is something we must look into," he declared. "It is like
Anthony to have let things go. And now, if you have time to wait,
suppose we have a story."

They had ample time, they assured him, being only too glad to postpone
the errand that must come later. They were eager for another tale,
moreover, for they were beginning to realize that these were not mere
haphazard narratives, but stories with some definite bearing upon the
places and people about them.

"We have plenty of time," Oliver assured him. "We are in no hurry at
all. You might even make it a very long one."

The Beeman nodded assent with that queer smile that seemed to betray
an uncanny understanding of the whole situation.

"A long one it shall be," he agreed, "for I have a good deal to tell
you."

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIDDLER OF APPLE TREE LANE

People said that the Brighton children could "never manage," when it
was said that they were planning to live in the little cottage on the
hill above Medford Valley.

"There's always a wind there from the sea, dearie," said old Granny
Fullerton to Barbara Brighton. "It will search out your very bones,
come winter."

Barbara shook her head cheerfully. A plump and rosy young person of
twelve years old does not worry much about cold winds.

People said also, with the strange blindness of those who can live
close by for years and yet never know what is in their neighbors'
hearts, that it was an odd thing that Howard Brighton should have
built that little house so far from the town in the midst of that
great stretch of wild land where so few folk lived.

"It is marshy in the valley and wooded on the hills," Granny Fullerton
said to Barbara, "with never a neighbor for miles. Of course the land
has been in your family time out of mind, but those that are your
nearest kin have always lived in the town. What could Howard Brighton
have been thinking to do such a thing!"

They did not know how he had toiled and planned in his narrow little
office down near the wharves of the seaport town, how he and his wife
had dreamed together that their three children should live in some
other place than on the cramped, stony street where they had been
born. After his wife's death he had still gone forward with his dream
and, when he found that he had, himself, not very long to live, he had
made haste to build the cottage that they had so greatly desired.