"Look at the tumbling chimneys!" crowed Alec. "Look at the broken shutters, swinging by one hinge. See those porch pillars—were they ever white? Behold that side entrance—looks as if a cyclone had struck it!"
Sally was silent. Even her buoyant hopes fell before the indisputable evidence given by her eyes. It was so big—the old place! A small house one might hope to repair, but a large building like this—it would cost more than they would have to spare in years. If the outside were any indication of the inside, the situation was hopeless.
She followed Alec in through the gateway, at the dilapidated stone side-posts of which Max gave a significant wave of the hand as he passed. An overgrown hedge ran along the entire front of the place, its untrimmed wildness adding to the general unkempt look, as did the sodden, tangled surface of what had once been a lawn, the rank bunches of shrubbery which half hid the front windows from sight, and the broken bricks in the old walk which led, beside a grass-grown driveway, from gate-post to porch.
"How did Maxwell ever come to let this place go to seed like this?" lamented Uncle Timothy. "He must have cared nothing at all for it. One would think it was forty years instead of only ten that it had been left to wind and weather."
"It's a wonder that some passing tramp hasn't set fire to it," commented Max, searching in his pocket for the key which had been delivered to him by Mr. Sidway, his uncle's executor. "Take a long breath before I let you in. It'll be musty and fusty enough to stifle you, probably."
With considerable difficulty he turned the key in the rusty lock and opened the door, which turned creakingly upon its long unused hinges. But with the first step inside Sally's drooping spirits leaped up again.
"Oh Max," she cried, "what a beautiful old hall!"
"Beautiful, is it?" inquired Max, laughing contemptuously. "Well, I can't say I see it."
"Looks just like a barracks to me!" sniffed Alec. "Phew-w—what air—or lack of it!"
"But it is beautiful," persisted Sally, in genuine enthusiasm. "See how wide and high, sweeping straight through to that door at the back. And see the wide, low staircase with the spindle railing and the curved posts at the bottom. See the carving over the doors—and the fanlight over the outside ones. And look at that fireplace!"