yringas and lilacs; and
the interior was choked with flourishing weeds, and with the briers of
the raspberry, on which a few berries hung. The heavy beams, left where
they fell a hundred years ago, proclaimed the honest solidity with which
the chateau had been built, and there was proof in the cut stone of the
hearths and chimney-places that it had once had at least the ambition of
luxury.

While its visitors stood amidst the ruin, a harmless garden-snake
slipped out of one crevice into another; from her nest in some hidden
corner overhead a silent bird flew away. For the moment,--so slight is
the capacity of any mood, so deeply is the heart responsive to a little
impulse,--the palace of the Caesars could not have imparted a keener
sense of loss and desolation. They eagerly sought such particulars of
the ruin as agreed with the descriptions they had read of it, and were
as well contented with a bit of cellar-way outside as if they had really
found the secret passage to the subterranean chamber of the chateau, or
the hoard of silver which the little habitant said was buried under it.
Then they dispersed about the grounds to trace out the borders of the
garden, and Mr. Arbuton won the common praise by discovering the
foundations of the stable of the chateau.

Then there was no more to do but to prepare for the picnic. They chose a
grassy plot in the shadow of a half-dismantled bark-lodge,--a relic of
the Indians, who resort to the place every summer. In the ashes of that
sylvan hearth they kindled their fire, Mr. Arbuton gathering the sticks,
and the colonel showing a peculiar genius in adapting the savage flames
to the limitations of the civilized coffee-pot borrowed of Mrs. Gray.
Mrs. Ellison laid the cloth, much meditating the arrangement of the
viands, and reversing again and again the relative positions of the
sliced tongue and the sardines that flanked the cold roast chicken, and
doubting dreadfully whether to put down the cake and the canned peaches
at once, or reserve them for a second course; the stuffed olives drove
her to despair, being in a bottle, and refusing to be balanced by
anything less monumental in shape. Some wild asters and red leaves and
green and yellowing sprays of fern which Kitty arranged in a tumbler
were hailed with rapture, but presently flung far away with fierce
disdain because they had ants on them. Kitty witnessed this outburst
with her usual complacency, and then went on making the coff