k to Betty Harris,
and he would stay for a while and talk with her of his beloved Athens.
Outside the sun gleamed. The breeze came fresh from the lake. As he made
his way up the long drive of the Lake Shore, the water dimpled in the
June sun, and little waves lapped the great stones, touching the ear
with quiet sound. It was a clear, fresh day, with the hint of coming
summer in the air. To the left, stone castles lifted themselves sombrely
in the soft day. Grim or flaunting, they faced the lake--castles from
Germany, castles from France and castles from Spain. Achilles eyed them
with a little smile as his swift, thin feet traversed the long stones.
There were turrets and towers and battlements frowning upon the
peaceful, workaday lake. Minarets and flowers in stone, and heavy marble
blocks that gripped the earth. Suddenly Achilles's foot slackened its
swift pace. His eye dropped to the silver tag on the music-roll in his
hand, and lifted itself again to a gleaming red-brown house at the left.
It rose with a kind of lightness from the earth, standing poised upon
the shore of the lake, like some alert, swift creature caught in flight,
brought to bay by the rush of waters. Achilles looked at it with
gentle eyes, a swift pleasure lighting his glance. It was a beautiful
structure. Its red-brown front and pointed, lifting roof had hardly
a Greek line or hint; but the spirit that built the Parthenon was in
it--facing the rippling lake. He moved softly across the smooth roadway
and leaned against the parapet of stone that guarded the water, studying
the line and colour of the house that faced him.

The man who planned it had loved it, and as it rose there in the light
it was perfect in every detail as it had been conceived--with one little
exception. On either side the doorway crouched massive grey-pink lions
wrought in stone, the heavy outspread paws and firm-set haunches resting
at royal ease. In the original plan these lions had not appeared. But
in their place had been two steers--wide-flanked and short-horned, with
lifted heads and nostrils snuffling free--something crude, brusque,
perhaps, but full of power and quick onslaught. The house that rose
behind them had been born of the same thought. Its pointed gable and its
facades, its lifted front, had the same look of challenge; the light,
firm-planted hoofs, the springing head, were all there--in the soft, red
stone running to brown in the flanks.

The stock-yard owner an