"Sally," he said, "they are flying kites in the Lot. You may like to see them." For, as I said at the beginning, before I was led off into this digression, it was a blustery Saturday in March. "Oh!" Sally cried, pushing back her chair. "Are they? Do you mind, Uncle John, if I climb a tree on that side? You can't see over the wall, you know." Mr. Hazen smiled quietly. "Climb any tree you like," he replied. "You will be careful, Sally, I know; careful of yourself and of the trees. But where is Charlie?" "Cousin Patty is getting him ready to go out with her." Sally was pretty well relieved of the care of Charlie by this time. "I'll finish this letter when I come in." She jumped up, snatched up her hood and her coat and slipped her hand into Uncle John's and they went out together. They parted at the foot of the steps and Mr. Hazen walked slowly downtown, smiling to himself in a satisfied way. Just across Box Elder Street was a high wall. It seemed to Sally to be at least twenty feet high; and the builder of that wall had added insult to injury by cementing it smoothly on the outside--Sally had never seen the inside of it--and by capping it with a smooth and projecting wooden roof. The wooden roof was no longer smooth, but warped with the sun and the rains of many years, and the mouldings on the under edges were coming away in places. But the wall was still absolutely unclimbable, although it was possible to see over it from the upper windows of the house or from the evergreens which surrounded it. Sally preferred the evergreens. To be sure, their heavy branches somewhat interfered with the view, but, at least, they were trees and they were out of doors. When Sally had found a comfortable perch in a spruce, she looked over into the Lot. The Lot was a relic of the past; of twenty-five or thirty years past. Its latest useful service had been, according to internal evidence, as a cornfield. The boys, running across it with their kites, were sure of this, for the hills were still there and made running on it a work of art, especially if there was a kite at the end of a string to need their attention. Indeed, perhaps I was wrong in putting the flying of kites in the class of useless service. At any rate, that was the only use to which Morton's lot had been put for many years. It was called "The Lot." There was no danger of ambiguity in so speaking of it, any more than there was in speaking of Hazen's Lane as "The Lane." No one would have any doubt at all--no one in Sally's set, at least--as to what was referred to, in either case.