he little Parker house
which they had just left, at the further side of the stretch of salt
meadow with the creek and bridge, was East Wellmouth village. Along the
white sand of the beach, now garlanded with lines of fresh seaweed
torn up and washed ashore by the gale, were scattered a half dozen
fishhouses, with dories and lobster pots before them, and at the rear
of these began the gray and white huddle of houses and stores, with two
white church spires and the belfry of the schoolhouse rising above their
roofs.

At their right, only a few yards from the foot-path where they stood,
the high sand bluff broke sharply down to the beach and the sea.
The great waves, tossing their white plumes on high, came marching
majestically in, to trip, topple and fall, one after the other, in
roaring, hissing Niagaras upon the shore. Over their raveled crests
the gulls dipped and soared. The air was clear, the breeze keen and
refreshing and the salty smell of the torn seaweed rose to the nostrils
of the watchers.

To the left were barren hills, dotted with scrub, and farther on the
pine groves, with the road from Wellmouth Centre winding out from their
midst.

All these things Thankful and Emily noticed, but it was on the prospect
directly ahead that their interest centered. For there, upon the slope
of the next knoll stood the "property" they had come to see and to which
they had been introduced in such an odd fashion.

Seen by daylight and in the glorious sunshine the old Barnes house
did look, as their guide said, more "lifelike and cheerful." A big,
rambling, gray-gabled affair, of colonial pattern, a large yard before
it and a larger one behind, the tumble-down shed in which General
Jackson had been tethered, a large barn, also rather tumble-down,
with henhouses and corncribs beside it and attached to it in haphazard
fashion. In the front yard were overgrown clusters of lilac and rose
bushes and, behind the barn, was the stubble of a departed garden.
Thankful looked at all these.

"So that's it," she said.

"That's it," said Captain Obed. "What do you think of it?"

"Humph! Well, there's enough of it, anyhow, as the little boy said about
the spring medicine. What do you think, Emily?"

Emily's answer was prompt and emphatic.

"I like it," she declared. "It looks so different this morning. Last
night it seemed lonesome and pokey and horrid, but now it is almost
inviting. Think what it must be in the spring and summer.