to
steps was paved with crumbling red bricks, moss-stained and
weed-embroidered. The front door had side-lights hidden by narrow, green
blinds and a fan-light above. Wade drew forth the key entrusted to him
by the agent and tried to fit it to the lock. But although he struggled
with it for several moments it refused stubbornly to have anything to do
with the keyhole.

"There's a side door around there," advised the boy from the carryall.
"Maybe it's the key to it."

"Maybe it is the key to it," responded Wade, wiping the perspiration
from his forehead. He pushed his way past the drooping branches of an
overgrown syringa, tripped over a box-bush, and passed around the left
of the house, following the remains of a path which led him to a door in
an ell. Back here there were gnarled apple and pear and cherry trees, a
tropical clump of rhubarb, and traces of what had evidently been at one
time a kitchen garden. Old-fashioned perennials blossomed here and
there; lupins and Sweet Williams and other sturdy things which had
resisted the encroachment of the grass. The key fitted readily, scraped
back, and the narrow door swung inward.

Gloom and mustiness were his first reward, but as his eyes became
accustomed to the darkness he saw that he was in the kitchen. There was
the sink with a hand-pump on one side and a drain-board on the other.
Here a table, spread with figured yellow oil-cloth; a range, chairs,
corner-cupboard, a silent, staring clock. His steps beat lonesomely on
the floor. A door, reached by a single step, led to the front of the
house. He pushed it open and groped his way up and in, across to the
nearest window. When the blinds were thrust aside he found himself
confronted by a long mahogany sideboard whose top still held an array of
Sheffield platters, covered dishes, candlesticks. Save for the dust
which lay heavily on every surface and eddied across the sunlight, there
was nothing to suggest desertion. Wade could fancy that the owner had
stepped out of doors for the moment or had gone upstairs. He found
himself listening for the sound of footsteps overhead or on the
staircase or in the darkened hall. But the only sounds were faint sighs
and crepitations doubtless attributable to the air from the open windows
stirring through the long-closed house, but which Wade, letting his
fancy stray, chose to believe came from the Ghosts of Things Past. He
pictured them out there in the hall, peering through the crevice