Book Description:
Just below the brow of the hill one of the traces broke (it was in the<br>horse and wagon days of a dozen years or so ago), and, if our driver had<br>not been a prompt man our adventure might have come to grief when it was<br>scarcely begun. As it was, we climbed on foot to the top, and waited<br>while he went into a poor old wreck of a house to borrow a string for<br>repairs.<br><br>We wondered if the house we were going to see would be like this one. It<br>was of no special design and it had never had a period. It was just a<br>house, built out of some one's urgent need and a lean purse. In the<br>fifty years or so of its existence it had warped and lurched and become<br>sway backed and old oh, so old and dilapidated without becoming in the<br>least antique, but just dismal and disreputable a veritable pariah of<br>architecture. We thought this too bad, for the situation, with its view<br>down a little valley and in the distance the hazy hills, was the sort of<br>thing that, common as it is in Connecticut, never loses its charm. Never<br>mind, we said, perhaps 'our house' would have a view, too.<br><br>But then our trace was mended and we went along happily, for it was<br>sunny weather and summer time, and, though parents of a family of three,<br>we were still young enough to find pleasure in novelty and a surprise at<br>every turn. Our driver was not a communicative spirit, but we drew from<br>him that a good many houses were empty in this part 'people dead or<br>gone away, and city folks not begun to come yet' he didn't know why,<br>for it was handy enough to town sixty miles by train and a<br>nice enough country, and healthy just overlooked, he guessed.<br><br>We agreed readily with this view; we were passing, just then, along a<br>deep gorge that had a romantic, even dangerous, aspect; we descended to<br>a pretty valley by a road so crooked that twice it nearly crossed<br>itself; we followed up a clear, foaming little river to a place where<br>there was a mill and a waterfall, also an old fashioned white house<br>surrounded by trees. Just there we crossed a bridge and our driver<br>pulled up.<br><br>'The man you came to see lives here,' he said. 'The house is ahead, up<br>the next hill.'<br><br>
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