This summer-house, long the favourite resort of the family and their guests, was a veritable curiosity in its way. Placed upon an artificial mound with two terraces, and reached by broad flights of red sandstone steps, it was architecturally a model of its kind. Hither, to pay their court to the daughters of the house, used to come George Erving and the young Sir William Pepperell, and if the dilapidated walls (now taken down, but still carefully preserved) could speak, they might tell of many an historic love tryst. The little house is octagonal in form, and on its bell-shaped roof, surmounted by a cupola, there poises what was originally a figure of Mercury. At present, however, the statue, bereft of both wings and arms, cannot be said greatly to resemble the dashing god. The exterior of the summer-house is highly ornamented with Ionic pilasters, and taken as a whole is quaintly ruinous. It is interesting to discover that it was utility that led to the elevation of the mound, within which was an ice-house! And to get at the ice the slaves went through a trap-door in the floor of this Greek structure! Isaac Royall, the builder of the fine old mansion, did not long live to enjoy his noble estate, but he was succeeded by a second Isaac, who, though a "colonel," was altogether inclined to take more care for his patrimony than for his king. When the Revolution began, Colonel Royall fell upon evil times. Appointed a councillor by mandamus, he declined serving "from timidity," as Gage says to Lord Dartmouth. Royall's own account of his movements after the beginning of "these troubles," is such as to confirm the governor's opinion. He had prepared, it seems, to take passage for the West Indies, intending to embark from Salem for Antigua, but having gone into Boston the Sunday previous to the battle of Lexington, and remained there until that affair occurred, he was by the course of events shut up in the town. He sailed for Halifax very soon, still intending, as he says, to go to Antigua, but on the arrival of his son-in-law, George Erving, and his daughter, with the troops from Boston, he was by them persuaded to sail for England, whither his other son-in-law, Sir William Pepperell (grandson of the hero of Louisburg), had preceded him. It is with this young Sir William Pepperell that our story particularly deals.