I was a stenographer and bookkeeper in a large city firm, and was overworked in body and brain. Sleep and appetite had both forsaken me, and I was sinking into a state of semi-invalidism, with little strength and less ambition. Rest I must have and a change of air, and when I saw an advertisement saying that Mrs. Eli Parks, who lived near the sea-coast and two miles from town, wanted summer boarders, and that her rooms were large and cool and quiet, and her house a hundred years old, I said: “That is the place for me; the fashionable world has not invaded Mrs. Parks. I can rest there. I will write her at once.” I did write her, with the result that on a day in early July I was standing by my trunk and asking the station master if there was no means of conveyance for strangers who visited Oakfield? “Why, yes,” he said; “of course there is. We ain’t so far behind as that. There’s a ’bus from town, here mostly for the trains. I don’t know why ’tain’t here now, only there don’t many come at this hour, or if they are comin’ they telegraph. Want to go to Miss Parks’? Well, you are in luck. That young chap there lives next to her. He’ll take you in his rig and I’ll send your traps bimeby. Hallo, you Sam! Come here!” At the agent’s call a young man, or boy, reined up suddenly, and I was soon driving with him along the pleasant country road toward Mrs. Parks’. The agent had introduced him as Sam Walker, and I found him inclined to be very sociable and ready to give me many items of interest concerning the neighborhood and its people. “See that big stone house on the hill?” he asked, pointing to a large, gray-looking building in the distance with tall pillars in front and a square tower on the corner. “Well, that’s the McPherson place—the richest man in town—or his half-brother was, and Mr. Colin has it in trust for a young man—Reginald Travers—who is visiting there now; some relation to old Sandy, I believe, and a big swell. He has money of his own, they say; and he’ll get a pile more bimeby. That’s the luck of some folks.”