Steeper and steeper became the road; scantier and less luxuriant the vegetation, until at last we emerged upon a barren, wind-swept table-land. A farm-yard gate barred our road, but at the impatient crack of the driver's whip a small brown maiden hastened from a near-by lodge to open it, curtseying to us prettily as we rattled through. Three minutes' drive across a desolate, gorse-covered moor, and our driver pulled up sharply at a gate in a scraggy privet hedge surrounding just such a ramshackle, weather-beaten farm-house as you find by the hundreds scattered along the coast of Maine. “Longwood,” he remarked laconically, pointing with his whip. Convinced that I could not have heard aright, I asked him over again, for, despite all the accounts I had read of the mean surroundings amid which the Emperor ended his days, I could not bring myself to believe that this miserable cottage, with its sunken roof and lichen-coated walls, could have sheltered for more than half a decade the conqueror of Europe, the master of the Tuileries and Fontainebleau and Versailles, the man whose troopers had stabled their horses in every capital of the Continent. Longwood House is an old-fashioned, rambling cottage, only one story high, unless you count the quarters improvised for the members of the Emperor's suite in the garret, which were lighted by means of small windows cut in the shingle roof. The house is built in the form of a T, the entrance, which is reached by four or five stone steps and a tiny latticed veranda, being represented by the bottom of the letter, while the dining-room, kitchens, and offices are represented by the top. Originally the dwelling of a peasant farmer, at the time Napoleon reached the island it was being used as a sort of shooting-box by the lieutenant-governor, the present front of the house being hastily added to form a reception-room for the Emperor. In addition to this _salle de réception_, where you are asked to sign the visitor' book by the old French soldier who is the official guardian of the place, there is a drawing-room, a dining-room, the Emperor's study, his bedroom, bath, and dressing-room—all small, ill-lighted, damp, and cheerless. Practically the entire lower floor of the house was used by Napoleon, the members of his _entourage_—marshals, ministers, and courtiers, remember, who were accustomed to the life of the most brilliant court in Europe—being accommodated in tiny, unventilated cubby-holes directly under the eaves. With the exception of two or three small pier-glasses, the house is now quite destitute of furniture, though in other respects it is kept religiously as it was in Napoleon's time, even the faded blue wall-paper, sprinkled with golden stars, having been carefully preserved. On the walls of the various rooms are notices in French and English indicating the purposes to which they were put during the imperial occupancy. Between two windows of the reception-room, where the Emperor's bed