“Well, I’d laugh,” was the reply, as Bowles slapped Spavin’s back again and told him to “ca-dap!” “Out of repair? What can you expect of a house standin’ empty for years? It wants shinglin’ all over; leaks like a sieve; suller wall cavin’ in in two or three places; jice rotted here and another there; cistern gone; conductor pipes bust; eaves rotted; two chimneys down, tother ready to tumble; door-jams settled; winder lights smashed, and some frames tetotally gone; roof sagged in, the middle pillars on piazza ready to fall, and floors givin’ away, and——” “Oh, please stop,” Alex. exclaimed. “You horrify me. It will take thousands to bring it up.” “No, sir-ee,” Bowles replied, beginning to see a chance for himself. “Lumber is cheap here, and labor, too. I’m a carpenter, I told you, and I’ll take the job reasonable. You’ll have to have it shingled, though, and a suller wall built and a cistern and jice and jams and winders.” He was going on with the list of needs again, when Alex. stopped him a second time by asking, “Is that the place?” as they came in sight of a great square house, standing on a rise of ground a little back from the road. “Yes, yes, that’s it! Here we be,” Bowles said, reining up before the gate, or rather where the gate used to be. It lay on the ground now, covered with snow, as was everything as far as the eye could reach, and Alex. involuntarily thought of the lines he had learned when a boy, “On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.” The snow around him was certainly bloodless and lay white and glistening in the wintry sunshine, glints of which were falling on Mount Washington in the distance and on the hills and tree tops nearer by. “It’s a beautiful view and must be lovely here in summer,” Alex. thought, as he went up the walk and the ricketty steps on to the piazza, where a board gave way under him and he came near falling. “Take care, or you will break your neck. I come nigh breakin’ my laig on one of them rotten boards,” Bowles said, putting out a hand to steady the young man. There was neither lock nor bolt to the door, and they soon stood in the long, wide hall, with a fireplace in a corner, a door at the farther end opening on to another piazza and stairs which led straight to the upper hall, where there was a scampering of little feet as of many animals running over the floor. “Rats or squirrels,” Bowles said. “The house is full of ’em.”