“I’m glad to hear it. We have very few visitors, and I take your paying us so early a call as uncommonly civil.” Grif hesitated. He had an idea that this old gentleman might be indulging in one of those dreary and inexplicable pleasantries to which grown-up people are often addicted. But perhaps he _really_ thought grandpapa had sent him. At any rate he would give him the benefit of the doubt. “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” he said courteously. “I mean, I didn’t exactly call. I didn’t know about you. It was an accident. I came through the wood and I wasn’t sure of my way home, and that is how I got here.” “Well, the chance guest should be the most welcome, for is he not sent us by the gods? And you aren’t far from home――only a mile or so. I am Captain Narcissus Batt, and this is my sister, Miss Nancy Batt.” Grif bowed politely, and they all walked towards the house together. It was built of red brick and stood upon a grassy terrace, below which were other terraces, leading down to the garden. Grif thought he had never seen so beautiful a place. Beside the house, at a little distance, was a stone-lipped pond almost flush with the sward. Water-lilies spread their broad green leaves on the motionless surface, and cedars stretched dark flat branches above it. In the garden, flowers and fruit-trees and vegetables grew in luxuriant profusion. Some of the roses were already in bloom; and there were stocks and carnations, pinks and peonies, while the sweet-pea was everywhere in bud. Against the brick wall beside which they walked trailed a green wistaria, and as they climbed the terraces he had a view of meadow-lands beyond, and in the distance of a river, grey and quiet, winding on into the unknown. The murmur of bees mingled with the heavy scent of pinks and the fresh green scent of newly-mown grass; the birds were silent; while all over there hung the hot, drowsy, June sun. But, quite apart from its beauty, Grif was aware of something in this place which appealed to him. He had a curious, yet very real sense of being welcomed, not alone by the people who lived here, but by the place itself. There was in its atmosphere something which made him happy, something oddly familiar even in its strangeness. He did not feel as if he were visiting it for the first time, but as if it were a dream-place to which he was coming back. And the impression was redoubled when he entered the house. Then it occurred to him in a flash that the garden――the garden, and still more the house――was haunted. But not by ghosts. Anything less ghostly could scarce be imagined. There was no shadow of melancholy or regret: all was happy and peaceful. Only he knew there were many voices here, far more than at his grandfather’s or even in the wood; and that they were closer and clearer than any he had heard before; and that, though now in the hot windless noon they were sighing and whispering so faintly, some day they would sing aloud and he should be able to make out the words.