Slowly we circled the knoll, dropped into the hollow, and stood upon the uneven floor of wide chestnut planks that was to be our camp.  Other lodgers had this barn besides ourselves and, unlike ourselves, hereditary tenants.  Swallows of steel-blue wings hung their nests in a whispering colony against the beams, a pair of gray squirrels arched their tails at us and chattering whisked up aloft, where they evidently have a family in the dilapidated pigeon cote, while among some cornstalks and other litter in the low earth cellar beneath we could hear the rustling doubtless born of the swift little feet of mice. (Yes, I know that it is a feminine quality lacking in me, but I have never yet been able to conjure up any species of fear in connection with these playful little rodents.)

The cots, table, chairs, and screens were as I had placed them several days ago; but it was not the interior that held us but the view looking eastward across the sunlit meadows.  In fact this side of the barn had the wide openings of an observatory.  The gnarled apple trees of the orchard still bore pink-and-white wreaths on the shady side, and the purling of bluebirds blended with the voice of the river that ran between the hills afar off—­the same stream that further up country was to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir.  Sitting there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty of it all, with never a thought of pick and spade, grub axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks of the knoll to find the depth or quality of its soil or test the planting possibilities.

“Let us go up to the woods and see Blake; he wrote me that he is to be there to-day, and suggested we should both meet him and see the treasure-trove to be found there before the spring blossoms are quite shed,” said Bart, suddenly, fumbling among the letters in his pocket; “and by the way, he said he would come back with us.  He evidently forgets that we are not ‘at home’ to company!”

“But The Man from Everywhere is not company.  He is simply a permanent institution and can go on dropping in as usual all summer if he likes.  Ann-stasia adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandalwood rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair of real tortoise-shell combs not two months ago?  And of course Maria Maxwell will not object; why should she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly know that he is in the house.”

Barney harnessed the mild-faced horse of our neighbour’s lending to that most comfortable of all vehicles, a buggy with an ample box behind and a top that can be dropped and made into a deep pocket to hold gleanings, or raised as a shield from sun and rain.  Ah! dear Mrs. Evan, is there anything that turns a sober, settled married couple backward to the enchanted “engaged” region like driving away through the spring lanes in a buggy pulled by a horse who has had nature-loving owners, so that he seems to know by intuition when to pause and when it would be most acceptable to his passengers to have him wander from the beaten track and browse among the tender wayside grasses that always seem so much more tempting than any pasture grazing?