the now opened house were concerned. John did push,
and when the door creaked he pushed again, and the rotten old lock
yielded, came away from the lintel, and as the two old fathers turned,
they were just in time to see their sons disappear through the doorway
and walk into the garden. With a troubled glance at one another, and an
effort not to appear in haste, the fathers followed them.

"Can't we get them away?" exclaimed Mr. Mortimer; "can't we tell them to
come out?"

"Certainly not, certainly not, brother," answered old Augustus, in a
reassuring tone. "You'll not say a word to dissuade them from going
wherever they please."

"No," said the other, in a nervous, hesitating manner. "You're quite
right, Augustus; you always are."

"Is it not a strange place?" exclaimed John, as they walked forward and
looked about them. "It seems to me that really and truly they never do
enter it."

"Well, I told you so," answered Valentine. "It is on account of the
eldest son. Miss Melcombe told me that he was a very eccentric
character, and for many years before his death he made gardening his one
occupation. He never suffered any one but himself to garden here, not
even so much as to mow the grass. After he was dead the poor old
grandmother locked it up. She didn't like any one else to meddle with
it."

"Why, he was dead before I was born," exclaimed John, "and I am
two-and-thirty. Poor soul! and she never got over that misfortune, then,
in all those years. There's a grand pear-tree! lots of rotten fruit
lying under it--and what a fine apple-tree! Is this of the celebrated
'redstreak' variety, I wonder, that Phillips praises so in his poem on
cider."

"A poem on cider!"

"Yes, I tell you, a poem on cider, and as long as 'Paradise Lost.' It
has some very fine passages in it, and has actually been translated into
Italian. I picked up a copy of it at Verona when I was a boy, and
learned a good deal of it by heart, by way of helping myself with the
language. I remember some of it to this day:--

"'Voi, donne, e Cavalier del bel paese
A cui propizio il ciel tanto concesse
Di bene, udite il mio cantare,' &c., &c.

"I wonder, now, whether this is a redstreak."

As their sons talked thus the two fathers approached, and gravely looked
on at this scene of riotous and yet lovely desolation. Nests with eggs
in them adorned every little bush, vines having broken the trellis ran
far along the ground. John, rememberi