He saw, too, that the walls of the house were covered with a heavy growth of Virginia creeper and that this vigorous vine was massed thickly about most of the windows. Another thing he noticed was that several panes of glass were broken out of the second-story window on the left under the portico roof, and that the opening had been boarded up on the inside. He noted all these things without pause while approaching the house, which was set at some distance back from the road; and after mounting the wide stone steps of the portico and crossing it, he pressed the push button at the right of the door. After waiting a little he gave it a more forceful shove. Still getting no response, he was in the act of raising his hand to the large and rusty knocker when the door was quietly opened and a rather tall and exceedingly slender young man stood before him in the dimness of the hall. PART III Most people who knew the house supposed that Michael Sutherland Cripps was the builder as well as the owner and occupant of the Cripps Mansion, as it was called, in the district of Boston popularly referred to as West Roxbury, though in reality situated in the southwestern extension of Jamaica Plain. But most people were mistaken. Mr. Cripps had, about middle life, made a pretty good “deal”—for those days—when he suddenly got on to the way things were going in the suburbs and made a few choice investments. As a result, he became what was then called a millionaire. Of course he’d have been a mere piker now, but as he couldn’t read the future, he was well satisfied. At last he could do something. And the first thing was to get some sort of a family about him. You see, this Cripps was naturally a lonely man—actually suffered unless he had people in the house with him; and he hadn’t had anybody since the death of his parents some years before. What I’ve said shows you that he had no family of his own—wife and all that. He wasn’t at all a woman hater, but he was a merciless woman critic. Odd thing, too, for he liked them first off, but every time he got within striking distance of matrimony he saw what a tiresome thing it was likely to be, and thereupon fled for his life. All the same, his ideal was to live in the midst of a family,—to have about him those who would be company for him and yet not have “claims” and things like that, that would make life a wretched bore. Now that he’d made his haul, his first thought was to advertise for a family to come and live with him. But really nice people wouldn’t answer such an ad, and that was the only kind he wanted. Along here the thought of his own relatives occurred to him. That wasn’t a bad idea. He’d get some of them to come.