He led her over a little path that wound around the smaller sand dunes directly behind Sunset Lane until they came to a clump of old willows. Once a cottage had stood under the willows; its timbers and crumbling bricks still lay about half buried in the sand and covered over with moss and climbing weeds. Though not a quarter of a mile from Aunt Achsa's the spot offered as complete solitude as though it had been at the ends of the world. The only sounds that reached its quiet were the far-off screaming of the seagulls as they fought for their food at low tide, and the distant boom-boom of the surging sea on the beach of the backside. "Look up there!" commanded Lavender proudly. And Sidney, looking as he had bidden her, gave a little cry of delight. For there among the great limbs of the biggest of the willows was a tiny house. "That's mine. Top Notch. Mr. Dugald built it. That's where I study." "Why, it's the cutest thing I ever _saw_!" Sidney was already at the bottom of the narrow ladder that led to the house. "Can I go up? I feel just like Alice in Wonderland, as though I'd have to take a pill to get small enough to squeeze in." "Oh, no, you won't. It's big enough for two." The structure had been cleverly contrived; plankings securely nailed to the spreading branches gave indeed ample space for two and even more; there were comfortable seats and wide unshuttered windows, a rough table and a secret shelf that looked like part of the wall until one unlocked and let down a little door and revealed a neat row of books. A "wing" of the house, added to another branch, Sidney declared, was "upstairs." Sidney sat down on one of the seats and Lavender sat on the other. "Why, this is the best _yet_!" Sidney cried with a long breath. "I don't see how Mr. Dugald thinks of the nice things he does." "He's the best sort that ever lived." Lavender asserted with a little break in his voice. "I don't know why he bothers 'bout me. But he found out that I came over here and sort o' camped among those ruins down there and I used to hide my things in that old oven so's Aunt Achsa wouldn't find them. He knew why, too. Y'see it bothers Aunt Achsa a lot to have me want to read and study so much--she's afraid I'll get to thinkin' of going away. She don't know, y'see, that I _am_ going, some day. So then Mr. Dugald helped me build Top Notch. There are all my books." Sidney ran her eye over the different volumes; among them were stories of seafaring adventure and books on travel and science, a dictionary, a Bible--and a volume of Browning's poetry. Sidney's hand shot out toward this last, then quickly dropped to her side.