But even as I spoke, I felt an odd shock of uneasiness and recoil from my own proposition. I did not want the lake to be there again; or to hear the unaccountable sounds to which it gave birth and the varying fall of the cataract over the dam. Did the others share my repugnance? I seemed to divine that they did. Even the impetuous Phil did not break out in welcome of my offer. Desire, who had smoothed her sober gray dress in some feminine fashion and stood like Marguerite or Melisande with a great braid over either shoulder, moved as if to speak, then changed her intention. A faint distress troubled her expression. As usual, Vere himself quietly lifted us out of unrest. "I'm not sure that couldn't be bettered, Mr. Locke," he demurred. "That is if you liked, of course! That marsh could be cleaned up and drained into pretty rich land, I guess. And down there beyond the barn, on the other side where the creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I should think might be the spot for a smaller, cleaner lake." "Doesn't it seem to you, Ethan," I said, "that we have progressed rather past the _Mr. Locke_ stage?" A little later, when Desire and I were alone on the porch, we walked to the end nearest the vanished lake. Or rather, I led her to a swinging couch there, and sat down beside her. "Point out the path down the hill by which you used to come," I asked of her. She shook her head. There are no words to paint how she looked in the clear morning, except that she seemed its sister. "It is only the end of a path that matters," she said. "Look instead at the marsh. Do you see nothing there stranger than a path through the woods even when trodden by a wilful woman?" Following her lifted finger, I saw a series of long mounds out there in the muddy floor not far from the dam. Not high, two or three feet at most, the mounds formed an irregular square of considerable area. "The old house!" I exclaimed. "It was set on fire by the second Desire Michell one night deep in winter. Her father built this house of yours and put in the dam that covered the ruins with water. I think he hoped to wash away the horror upon the place." "I know so little of your history."