Brown looked at the door with its iron knocker, at the delicately spread fan-light over it, at the side-lights, at the half-pillars with their Ionic capitals, at the ancient clumps of lilacs flanking the stone step--great, heavy-stemmed and gnarled old bushes now all hung with perfumed clusters of palest lavender bloom. Leaning there on the picket fence he inhaled their freshness, gazing up into the sunny foliage of the ancient trees, elms, maples, and one oak so aged and so magnificent that, awed, his eyes turned uneasily again toward the house to reassure himself that it was still inhabited. Cat and kittens were comfortable evidence, also a hen or two loitering near, and the pleasant sound from a dozen bee-hives, and a wild rose in a china bowl, dimly visible on an inner window-sill. There were two characters he might assume; he might go to the back door and request a job; he might bang on the front door with that iron knocker, shaped like a mermaid, and ask for country board. Of one thing, somehow or other, he was convincing himself; this crumbling house and its occupants knew as much about the recent high-jinks in New York as did the man who built it in the days when loop-holes were an essential part of local architecture, and the painted Sagamore passed like a spectre through the flanking forests. So Brown, carrying his suit-case, opened the gate, walked up the path, seized the knocker, and announced himself with resolution. [Illustration] [Illustration] XIX WHILE he waited the cat looked up at him, curiously but pleasantly. "Hello, old lady," he said; and she arched her back and rubbed lightly against his nigh leg while the kittens tumbled over his shoes and played frantically with the frayed bottoms of his trousers. This preliminary welcome seemed to comfort him out of all proportion to its significance; he gazed complacently about at the trees and flowers, drew in deep breaths of the lilac's fragrance, and waited, listening contentedly for the coming foot-fall. He had not heard it when the door opened and a young girl appeared on the threshold, standing with one hand resting on the inner knob; the other touching the pocket of her apron, in which was a ball of yarn stuck through with two needles. She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth was perhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners; and her eyes were quite perfectly made, except that one was hazel-brown and the other hazel-grey. Hat in hand, Brown bowed; and then she did a thing which interested him; she lifted the edges of her apron between slender white thumbs and forefingers and dropped him the prettiest courtesy he had ever seen off the stage. "I came to inquire," he said, "whether you ever take summer boarders." "What are boarders?" she asked. "I never heard of them except in naval battles." "Thank heaven," he thought; "this is remote, all right; and I have discovered pristine innocence in the nest."