On the occasion of our last visit to the manor-house, we determined to go "beachway." We ran our rowboat on a sandy point jutting into the mouth of the creek, and took our way along the narrow strip of solid land that lay between river and marsh. White-limbed sycamores and tangled undergrowth went along with us, and sometimes inclined to take up more than their share of the narrow way. Brilliant berries gleamed on some bare, brown bushes, and the green leaves of the smilax pretended that they grew there too. Along the beach, tall bunches of reeds stood out against the brown of the river and the blue of the sky in their waving slenderness. Looking backward across the marshes, we could see the white railing on Gadabout's upper deck and could catch the flutter of her flags through the openings in the trees. As we neared Westover, a slope led to higher land and to a riverward, side entrance to the grounds. Passing through this, a tangle of vines swinging with the great iron gate, we followed the walk toward the house. Just before reaching the ballroom wing, we paused in front of a small brick outbuilding to have a few appropriate shivers over what was under it. From reading and from our talks at Westover, we knew about the mysterious subterranean chambers down there. To be sure, we had not seen them yet (one thing and another having got in the way of our making a visit to them); but surely one need not always wait to see; one can shiver a little anyway upon hearsay. And the hearsay was like this. Somewhere underneath that brick outbuilding was an opening down into the earth, like a dry well, some fifteen or twenty feet deep. At the bottom, arched doorways on opposite sides of the shaft opened into two small square rooms. The walls of the well and of the rooms were cement; and the floors were paved with brick. A round stone table used to stand in one of the rooms. From this well once ran two passages or tunnels, large enough for people to go through; one connecting with the house by a curious stairway in the old wing that was destroyed in the war, and the other leading to the river. We stood looking blankly at the closed outbuilding trying to imagine the hidden rooms and passages beneath it. Tradition told us that they were for refuge from the Indians. That explanation seemed well enough at first. But before we could get into the spirit of it enough to catch even the faintest bit of a warwhoop and to scuttle for the subterranean chambers, we made up our minds that that was not what the things were for anyway. There had ceased to be much danger from Indians along that part of the James by the time even this old home at Westover was built.