“Oh, I say, Megsy, be a sport. You came all this distance for an adventure and now want to back out. I think it will be scads of fun to walk over to that woods. I’ll agree to turn back there (if you’ll go that far), even if we don’t find the old house.” Betsy seemed so truly disappointed that the others decided to go to the edge of the woods.
The cold wind which had been blowing over the bluff by the sea could not reach them in the lowland and the mid-morning sun was warm, dazzling the snow.
Betsy, in high spirits, plunged ahead, making a trail through the drifts, that it might be easier traveling for the others, since she had been the one who most wanted to come. As they neared the woods the sharp eyes of the young detective made an interesting discovery. “It isn’t just an ordinary woods,” she turned her glowing eyes to remark. “There’s a high impenetrable hedge all around it.”
Barbara laughed. “How do you know it is impenetrable? We’re too far away to be sure of that, I should think.”
Betsy had started to run, having reached a place that had been swept clean of snow. “There’s one thing I’m sure of,” she called over her shoulders, “which is that in the middle of the woods stands the deserted house we’ve come to see.”
When they reached the hedge and had followed around it for a time, they decided that Betsy was right. It did indeed seem to be impenetrable.
“There must be a gate somewhere! That Captain Burgess, who used to live here, had to go in and out, and I don’t suppose that he jumped over the hedge every time.”
“Surely not, if it were as tall then as it is now,” Babs replied, amused at the picture suggested by Betsy’s remark.
“Here it is! And such big iron gates as they are!” It was Sally who, having gone on ahead, turned to shout to them. They hurried to her side.
“This must have been a carriage entrance once upon a time,” Virginia remarked, “but the gates are fast shut with vines now. It is plain to see that they haven’t been opened for years.”