had been laughter of the young, and enough love and affection to go around and fill its little rooms. Call it atmosphere, or spirits, or what you will, there is something about the feeling of an old house. And structurally any old house can yield a story of its past. On the Cape this especially means when additions were made to accommodate an expanding family, or when a move or two was made across a field, or across a whole town, in order to enjoy the house in a better location. For the Cape Codder regarded his home as moveable as his vessel and they were built from the beginning so that you could up anchor and move her off with the greatest of ease. Even to this day the Town Report of Dennis lists among its Police Duties from 15 to 20 buildings “escorted through town” each year. My own house was no exception. Three ells have been appended through its long years of service and it has been moved to a new location at least once. Now it defies Cape tradition by facing north instead of south, but as the family room is now exposed to the sun, and the refreshing southwest breezes of summer, the break with tradition seems practical. It is easy to trace the structural changes that have taken place within the house to satisfy the taste of succeeding generations. There is the elimination of the partition of the “borning room” to make a larger living room, the installation of larger windows by a generation that couldn’t be bothered washing the old, small panes, the relocation of the stairs for convenience and safety, and many other changes that a little house-detective work reveals. Recently, in the course of some reconstruction, I revealed some timbers, in one of the newer walls, that were heavily encrusted with salt. Clearly they had come from the old salt works on the River. When the salt works were abandoned Cape thrift put their timber to work in many a home, sometimes to the despair of carpenters who find that a nail soon rusts out of such wood. But the wood places definitely the period of the reconstruction of the wall.