Bowles glanced sidewise at the young man beside him, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, and thought how unlike he looked to a farmer.
“I don’t know,” Alex. said. “Is the house greatly out of repair?”
“Well, I’d laugh,” was the reply, as Bowles slapped Spavin’s back again and told him to “ca-dap!” “Out of repair? What can you expect of a house standin’ empty for years? It wants shinglin’ all over; leaks like a sieve; suller wall cavin’ in in two or three places; jice rotted here and another there; cistern gone; conductor pipes bust; eaves rotted; two chimneys down, tother ready to tumble; door-jams settled; winder lights smashed, and some frames tetotally gone; roof sagged in, the middle pillars on piazza ready to fall, and floors givin’ away, and——”
“Oh, please stop,” Alex. exclaimed. “You horrify me. It will take thousands to bring it up.”
“No, sir-ee,” Bowles replied, beginning to see a chance for himself. “Lumber is cheap here, and labor, too. I’m a carpenter, I told you, and I’ll take the job reasonable. You’ll have to have it shingled, though, and a suller wall built and a cistern and jice and jams and winders.”
He was going on with the list of needs again, when Alex. stopped him a second time by asking, “Is that the place?” as they came in sight of a great square house, standing on a rise of ground a little back from the road.
“Yes, yes, that’s it! Here we be,” Bowles said, reining up before the gate, or rather where the gate used to be.
It lay on the ground now, covered with snow, as was everything as far as the eye could reach, and Alex. involuntarily thought of the lines he had learned when a boy,
“On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”