its walls--restored and tinted down to match--our low bookshelves;
on the old oak floor were our mellow rugs, and here and there tables and
desk and couches, with deep easy-chairs gathered about a wide open fire
of logs. Oh, there is nothing more precious in this world than the dream
of a possibility like that, when one is still young enough, and strong
enough to make it come true!

"This was the kitchen in the old days," Mr. Westbury said. "They cooked
over the fire and baked in that oven. Old Uncle Phineas Todd, over at
Lonetown, who is ninety years old, and remembers when his mother cooked
that way, says that nothing has ever tasted so good since as the meat
and bread that came out of those ovens. The meat was rich with juice
and the bread had a crust on it an inch thick. That would be
seventy-five years ago, and it's about that long, I guess, since this
one was used." Mr. Westbury opened a door to another square room of
considerable size. "This was their best room," he said. "They opened the
front door only for funerals and weddings. I was married over there in
that corner twelve years ago. That was the last wedding. My wife's
father lived here till last year. That was the last funeral. He was
eighty-five when he died. People get to be old folks up here."

There was a smaller fireplace in this room, and another in a little room
behind the chimney, and still another in the first we had entered--four
in all--one on each side of the great stone chimney-base. For the most
part the walls seemed in good condition--the plaster having been made
from oyster shells, Westbury said, hauled fifteen miles from Long Island
Sound.

We returned to the long, low room and climbed the stair to a sort of
half-room--unfinished, the roof sloping to the eaves. Westbury called it
the kitchen-chamber, and it led to bedrooms--a large one and three
small ones. Also, to a tiny one which in our dream we promptly converted
into a bath-room. Then we climbed still another stair--a tortuous,
stumbling ascent--to the attic.

We had expected it to be an empty place, of dust, cobwebs, and darkness.
It was dusty enough and none too light, but it was far from empty. Four
spinning-wheels of varying sizes were in plain view between us and the
front window. A dozen or more of black, straight-backed chairs of the
best and oldest pattern were mingled with a mass of other ancient
relics--bandboxes, bird-cages, queer-shaped pots and utensils,
trenchers, he