The walk was up an almost straight hill, relieved by occasional resting-places by which alone travel in such a country is made possible to man or beast, so that when Brooke reached the gate of the Fenton house she paused, both for breath and to get her bearings. No pathway had been shovelled to the front door, and the beaten track led round the side of the house to a wide porch at the south, which also held a well-house in its shelter, and this Brooke followed. Her knock at the door was followed by a rumbling sound from within, which began in an opposite corner of the house, and drew rapidly nearer; then the door opened outward, singularly enough, and just inside it sat a little old lady in a wheel-chair that she both guided and propelled with her own hands. “I’m so sorry to have troubled you,” Brooke began. “I wished to see Mrs. Enoch Fenton, and Miss Keith said that it was the first house before the cross-roads, but I must have misunderstood.” “And so it is, dear. I’m Mrs. Fenton.” Then, as she read Brooke’s puzzled expression: “Oh, I see, Keith didn’t tell you that I use wheels instead of feet. Come right in; see, Tatters is quite at home here, and he knows where my cooky drawer is just as well as any child in the neighbourhood,” and, jerking a strap that she held in her hand, which was also fastened to the door handle, she closed it behind her guest even before Brooke realized and apologized for not doing it herself. Quick as a flash the chair was turned, and travelled across the square hall, which also served as a summer sitting room, into a kitchen, cheerful and neat as wax, while as Brooke followed, her senses now keyed to the unusual, she noticed that not only had the door-ways been widened, but that all the furniture, tables, dresser, chest of drawers, and even the stove itself were below the usual level. “Choose a chair,” said Mrs. Fenton, smiling brightly as she brought herself to a stop close to the sunny southwest bay window, where a wide shelf with a deep ledge, containing sewing materials and various garments in process of manufacture, showed it to be her habitual nook. As Brooke drew a splint-bottomed rocker nearer to her hostess, she noticed that, though the white hair and thin face had at first given the impression of greater age, Mrs. Fenton was not more than sixty-five, while the intelligence of her expression and brightness of eye might well belong to a woman of fifty, and although her lower limbs seemed small and were wrapped in a shawl, her arms and chest were full and muscular.