It is charming and will not clash at all with the long, low house with its shutters and dormers and loop-holes, and the little stone forts flanking it.
Telegraph me what day and what train. And tell Helen you and she may bring your maid-of-all-work.
JAMES CLELAND, in love with you.
There was no need of a fire in the library that evening at Runner's Rest. The night was mild; a mist bordered the rushing river and stars glimmered high above it.
Every great tree loomed huge and dark and still, the foliage piled up fantastically against the sky-line. There was an odour of iris in the night; and silence, save for the dull stamping of horses in the stable.
Cleland, deep in an arm-chair on the porch, became aware of Grismer's tall shape materializing from the fog about him.
"It's a wonderful place, Cleland," he said with a graceful, inclusive gesture. "All this sweet, vague mystery—this delicate grey dark appeals to me—satisfies, rests me.... As though this were the abode of the Blessed Shades, and I were of them.... And the rest were ended."
He seated himself near the other and gazed toward the mist out of which the river's muffled roar came to them in ceaseless, ghostly melody.
"Charon waits at every river, they say," he remarked, lighting a cigarette. "I fancy he must employ a canoe down there."
"The Iroquois once did. The war trail crossed there. When they burned Old Deerfield they came this way."