“I—I guess I can accommodate ye,” he stuttered; “but—there’ll be some preliminaries—I wa’n’t exactly prepared— There’s the price of the property and the terms— S’pose likely you’ll want a mortgage—eh?” He rubbed his bristly chin dubiously. “I want to buy the house,” Lydia said. “I want to be sure—” “Have you seen the rooms upstairs?” asked the minister, turning his back upon his senior deacon. She shook her head. “Well, then, why not—” Wesley Elliot took a step or two toward the winding stair, dimly seen through the gloom of the hall. “Hold on, dominie, them stairs ain’t safe!” warned the Deacon. “They’ll mebbe want a little shoring up, before— Say, I wish—” “I don’t care to go up now, really,” protested the girl. “It—it’s the location I like and—” She glanced about the desolate place with a shiver. The air of the long-closed rooms was chilly, despite the warmth of the June day outside. “I’ll tell you what,” said the deacon briskly. “You come right along down to the village with me, Miss Orr. It’s kind of close in here; the house is built so tight, there can’t no air git in. I tell you, them walls—” He smote the one nearest him with a jocular palm. There followed the hollow sound of dropping plaster from behind the lath. “Guess we’d better fix things up between us, so you won’t be noways disappointed in case that other party—” he added, with a crafty glance at the minister. “You see, he might turn up ’most any day.” “Oh, yes!” exclaimed the girl, walking hurriedly to the door. “I—I should like to go at once.” She turned and held out her hand to the minister with a smile. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I wanted you to see the house as it is now.” He looked down into her upturned face with its almost childish appeal of utter candor, frowning slightly. “Have you no one—that is, no near relative to advise you in the matter?” he asked. “The purchase of a large property, such as this, ought to be carefully considered, I should say.” Deacon Whittle coughed in an exasperated manner. “I guess we’d better be gitting along,” said he, “if we want to catch Jedge Fulsom in his office before he goes to dinner.” Lydia turned obediently. “I’m coming,” she said. Then to Elliot: “No; there is no one to—to advise me. I am obliged to decide for myself.” Wesley Elliot returned to Brookville and his unfinished sermon by a long detour which led him over the shoulder of a hill overlooking the valley. He did not choose to examine his motive for avoiding the road along which Fanny Dodge would presently return. But as the path, increasingly rough and stony as it climbed the steep ascent, led him at length to a point from whence he could look down upon a toy village, arranged in stiff rows about a toy church, with its tiny pointing steeple piercing the vivid green of many trees, he sat down with a sigh of relief and something very like gratitude.