It was a large, two-story wood building, painted white, with green blinds, and consisted of a main body nearly fifty feet square, in which, were the apartments for the family, and of an L, as it was called, from the shape it gave the building, running back, and devoted to the kitchen and sleeping chambers of the servants.  The height of the stories in this L was somewhat less than in the front part of the house, indicating thereby, perhaps, the more humble relation in which it stood to the latter.  Three large chimneys rose above the roof, two from the principal building and one from the kitchen.  A wide hall in the centre, swept through the whole length without interference from the rear building, which might be considered as a continuation of somewhat less than one-half of the part in front.  The wood-house stood on the same side as the kitchen, some twenty feet distant; and still further back, a large barn, also of wood, and painted a light lead color, with the exception of the cornice and trimmings about the doors and windows, which were white.  The house itself stood some fifty feet back from the high road, and was surrounded by enormous elms, those glories of the cultivated American landscape, some measuring four and five feet in diameter, and throwing their gracefully drooping branches far and high over the roof, to which, in the heat of summer, they furnished an acceptable shade.  The prospect in front, and looking between two rows of maples that lined the road, comprehended the Yaupaae, expanded into a lake, green fields and apple orchards running down to the water’s edge, and hills, clothed to the top with verdure, rolling away like gigantic waves into the distance.  Behind the house was a garden and orchard of, perhaps, two acres, terminating in a small evergreen wood of hemlocks and savins, interspersed with a few noble oaks.  Mr. Armstrong had laid out several winding paths through this little wood, and placed here and there a rustic seat; and the taste of his daughter had embellished it with a few flowers.  Here Faith had taught the moss pink to throw its millions of starry blossoms in early spring over the moist ground, after the modest trailing arbutus, from its retreat beneath the hemlocks, had exhausted its sweet breath; here, later in the season, the wild columbine wondered at the neighborhood of the damask rose; here, in the warm days of summer, or in the delicious moonlight evenings, she loved to wander, either alone or with her father, in its cool paths.

Still more beautiful than the prospect from the front door, were the views from this charming spot.  Rising to a considerable elevation above the river to which it descended with a rapid slope, it commanded not only the former view to the south, though more extended, but also one to the northwest.  Beneath, at a depression of eighty feet, lay the lake-like river with its green islets dotting the surface, while, at a short distance, the Fall of the Yaupaae precipitated