A few changes were made, and then what had been Stannard’s Inn was transformed into the comfortable farmhouse which you see to your right in the southeast angle of The 4 Corners as you sit on the steps of the church. It is very large, with a wide hall in the centre and a big fireplace at the end, the glory and pride of the family, who would almost as soon part with an arm or foot as have the great chimney removed, with its fireplaces in so many rooms and its link with the olden time before stoves were in fashion or furnaces had been thought of. It was built by a Stannard some years before the church, and has been owned by the Stannards ever since. They are a thrifty race, and the Stannard farm is the finest in the neighborhood. Ephraim Stannard, the boy who watched with a swelling heart the last stage roll away is the owner, and a deacon in the church on whose steps you are sitting while you inspect The 4 Corners and the house which was once Stannard’s Inn. Diagonally across the corner on the northwest angle is another and far more pretentious house, with gables and a bay window and a conservatory and a terraced garden down the hill behind it. This was once the Morris place, and Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Stannard were sisters, and both came, in their young womanhood, as brides to The 4 Corners, one as the wife of plain, honest-hearted Ephraim Stannard, a farmer, the other the wife of reckless, good-for-nothing Charles Morris, who broke her heart in two years and buried her in the yard behind the church and raised a tall monument to her memory, ran a wild career for a time and then died suddenly, leaving his only son, Charles Harold, to the care of his aunt, Mrs. Ephraim Stannard. For a while the Morris house was rented, but as time passed on and the village around the station grew in importance, few, who could afford to pay the rent, cared to live at The 4 Corners, and it was at last untenanted, while the decay of time crept over it until it would cost more to repair it than Ephraim Stannard, who had it in charge, felt warranted in putting upon it. The repairs, however, were made later on with a lavish hand, and you wonder that so much money should have been expended upon the place, and who the owners are. The windows and blinds are open, and a turbaned negress is sweeping the piazza. Otherwise you see no sign of life, and you hear later that the family are at the sea-shore. Around the farmhouse everything is quiet, except the motherly hen clucking to her brood of chickens and wandering unmolested through the yard. It seems a lonely place, but the view is so fine in every direction, the air so pure and the sky so blue, that you decide at last that no better spot can be found for the first scene of your story, which is to open years prior to the July morning when Henriet and Jehu took you up the old stage hill to The 4 Corners. CHAPTER II KENNETH AND HARRY