Toward late afternoon when the light began to fail us, we would utilize the time hunting the morrow’s locations. This fading hour found Billy Bitzer, David, and myself (myself still in Janice Meredith costume and curls of “1776”) enjoying the physical luxury of the “Red Devil,” but mentally disturbed over the stone house and horses. We happened to turn into a pretty road; we spied a beautiful gateway and beyond the gateway, grassy slopes and wonderful trees and pools of quiet water.
“Let’s stop here a minute,” said Mr. Griffith. “Whose place is this?”
“I’d never go in there, if I were you,” answered Mr. Predmore. “That place belongs to Mr. Goddefroy, he’s the wealthiest man around here; won’t have an automobile on his place and is down on anybody who rides in one; has fine stables and the automobiles are just beginning to interfere with his horseback rides. I don’t know just how he’d receive you. Anyhow I can’t drive you in in this car of mine.” So we parked outside in the roadway.
“We’ve got to work in here, that’s all there is to it,” said David, looking about. But where did anybody live? The road wound up and up. Sheep nibbling on the velvet grass were mixed in with a few prize pigs taking their siestas beneath beautiful copper beeches. “Certainly is some place,” he continued. We had sauntered up the gravel road quite to the hilltop before we saw coming towards us across the lawn, a bright-eyed, pink-cheeked woman in simple gingham dress. She greeted us pleasantly. The situation was explained and the lady replied, “Well, that is very interesting, and as far as I am concerned you are quite welcome to take some pictures here, but you must ask the boss first.”
Over by his stables we found the “Boss.”
“We’d like to take some pictures, please, on your beautiful place.” Stone houses and horses we had quite forgotten for the moment in the wealth of moving picture backgrounds the estate provided. “We’re stopping up at the Inn for a week—doing some Fenimore Cooper stories, and we are looking primarily for a stone house and some horses.”
“Have you seen the old stone house down below?”
“Stone house?” I repeated to myself; then to be sure, whispered to Bitzer, “Did he say a stone house?”
Bitzer replied, “Yes, he said a stone house.” Mr. Griffith managed to pull himself together, but his answer came rather halting, “Why, why, no.”
“Come along and I’ll show you. Maybe you can use it.”