I looked out on the bright October morning with a

renewed sense of isolation. Trees crowded about my

windows, many of them still wearing their festal colors,

scarlet and brown and gold, with the bright green of

some sulking companion standing out here and there

with startling vividness. I put on an old corduroy outing

suit and heavy shoes, ready for a tramp abroad, and

went below.

The great library seemed larger than ever when I beheld

it in the morning light. I opened one of the

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French windows and stepped out on a stone terrace,

where I gained a fair view of the exterior of the house,

which proved to be a modified Tudor, with battlements

and two towers. One of the latter was only half-finished,

and to it and to other parts of the house the workmen's

scaffolding still clung. Heaps of stone and piles of lumber

were scattered about in great disorder. The house

extended partly along the edge of a ravine, through

which a slender creek ran toward the lake. The terrace

became a broad balcony immediately outside the library,

and beneath it the water bubbled pleasantly around

heavy stone pillars. Two pretty rustic bridges spanned

the ravine, one near the front entrance, the other at the

rear. My grandfather had begun his house on a generous

plan, but, buried as it was among the trees, it suffered

from lack of perspective. However, on one side toward

the lake was a fair meadow, broken by a water-tower,

and just beyond the west dividing wall I saw a little

chapel; and still farther, in the same direction, the outlines

of the buildings of St. Agatha's were vaguely perceptible

in another strip of woodland.

The thought of gentle nuns and school-girls as neighbors

amused me. All I asked was that they should keep

to their own side of the wall.

I heard behind me the careful step of Bates.

"Good morning, Mr. Glenarm. I trust you rested

quite well, sir."

His figure was as austere, his tone as respectful and

colorless as by night. The morning light gave him a

pallid cast. He suffered my examination coolly enough;

his eyes were, indeed, the best thing about him.

"This is what Mr. Glenarm called the platform. I

believe it's in Hamlet, sir."

I laughed aloud. "Elsinore: A Platform Before the

Castle."

"It was one of Mr. Glenarm's little fancies, you might

call it, sir."

"And the ghost,-where does the murdered majesty of

Denmark lie by day?"

"I fear it wasn't provided, sir! As you see, Mr. Glenarm,

the house is quite incomplete. My late master had

not carried out all his plans."

Bates did not smile. I fancied he never smiled, and

I wondered whether John Marshall Glenarm had played

upon the man's lack of humor. My grandfather had

been possessed of a certain grim, ironical gift at jesting,

and quite likely he had amused himself by experimenting

upon his serving man.




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