"What mountain is that standing off by itself?" I asked. "Schunemunk," he said. "Your place--well, I guess it will be yours before plantin'-time comes--faces that mountain and looks up the valley between it and the main highlands on the left. Yonder's the house, on the slope of this big round hill, that'll shelter you from the north winds." I shall not describe the place very fully now, preferring that it should be seen through the eyes of my wife and children, as well as my own. "The dwelling appears old," I said. "Yes; part of it's a good deal more'n a hundred years old. It's been added to at both ends. But there's timbers in it that will stand another hundred years. I had a fire made in the livin'-room this mornin', to take off the chill, and we'll go in and sit down after we've looked the place over. Then you must come and take pot-luck with us." At first I was not at all enthusiastic, but the more I examined the place, and thought it over, the more it grew on my fancy. When I entered the main room of the cottage, and saw the wide, old-fashioned fireplace, with its crackling blaze, I thawed so rapidly that John Jones chuckled. "You're amazin' refreshin' for a city chap. I guess I'll crack on another hundred to the price." "I thought you were not going to crack up the place at all." "Neither be I. Take that old arm-chair, and I'll tell you all about it. The place looks rather run down, as you have seen. Old Mr. and Mrs. Jamison lived here till lately. Last January the old man died, and a good old man he was. His wife has gone to live with a daughter. By the will I was app'inted executor and trustee. I've fixed on a fair price for the property, and I'm goin' to hold on till I get it. There's twenty acres of plowable land and orchard, and a five-acre wood-lot, as I told you. The best part of the property is this. Mr. Jamison was a natural fruit-grower. He had a heap of good fruit here and wouldn't grow nothin' but the best. He was always a-speerin' round, and when he come across something extra he'd get a graft, or a root or two. So he gradually came to have the best there was a-goin' in these parts. Now I tell you what it is, Mr. Durham, you can buy plenty of new, bare places, but your hair would be gray before you'd have the fruit that old man Jamison planted and tended into bearing condition; and you can buy places with fine shade trees and all that, and a good show of a garden and orchard, but Jamison used to say that an apple or cherry was a pretty enough shade tree for him, and he used to say too that a tree that bore the biggest and best apples didn't take any more room than one that yielded what was fit only for the cider press. Now the p'int's just here. You don't come to the country to amuse yourself by developin' a property, like most city chaps do, but to make a livin'. Well, don't you see? This farm is like a mill. When the sun's another month higher it will start all the machinery in the apple, cherry, and