e village streets. When they left
town, Bayliss suggested that they drive out past the Trevor
place. The girls began to talk about the two young New
Englanders, Trevor and Brewster, who had lived there when
Frankfort was still a tough little frontier settlement. Every one
was talking about them now, for a few days ago word had come that
one of the partners, Amos Brewster, had dropped dead in his law
office in Hartford. It was thirty years since he and his friend,
Bruce Trevor, had tried to be great cattle men in Frankfort
county, and had built the house on the round hill east of the
town, where they wasted a great deal of money very joyously.
Claude's father always declared that the amount they squandered
in carousing was negligible compared to their losses in
commendable industrial endeavour. The country, Mr. Wheeler said,
had never been the same since those boys left it. He delighted to
tell about the time when Trevor and Brewster went into sheep.
They imported a breeding ram from Scotland at a great expense,
and when he arrived were so impatient to get the good of him that
they turned him in with the ewes as soon as he was out of his
crate. Consequently all the lambs were born at the wrong season;
came at the beginning of March, in a blinding blizzard, and the
mothers died from exposure. The gallant Trevor took horse and
spurred all over the county, from one little settlement to
another, buying up nursing bottles and nipples to feed the orphan
lambs.

The rich bottom land about the Trevor place had been rented out
to a truck gardener for years now; the comfortable house with its
billiard-room annex--a wonder for that part of the country in
its day--remained closed, its windows boarded up. It sat on the
top of a round knoll, a fine cottonwood grove behind it. Tonight,
as Claude drove toward it, the hill with its tall straight trees
looked like a big fur cap put down on the snow.

"Why hasn't some one bought that house long ago and fixed it up?"
Enid remarked. "There is no building site around here to compare
with it. It looks like the place where the leading citizen of the
town ought to live."

"I'm glad you like it, Enid," said Bayliss in a guarded voice.
"I've always had a sneaking fancy for the place myself. Those
fellows back there never wanted to sell it. But now the estate's
got to be settled up. I bought it yesterday. The deed is on its
way to Hartford for signature."

Enid turned round in her seat. "Wh