Introduction
cross the threshold was to step backward into colonial times. How true it is that it needs at least a century to mellow a house and make it faintly comparable to out-of-doors!
The hall-way of the Crabtree cottage was neither short nor narrow, but you got that impression from its low ceiling and the dark wooden walls, which time had almost blackened. Lifting a stout wooden latch, I passed into the living-room, with its ample open fireplace, long unused, for a little airtight stove had done duty for both cooking and heating for many years. This was the only innovation: all else was as when its first occupant had moved into the "new" house and given over the log hut to other uses. The high-backed settle, the quaint, claw-footed chairs, a home-made table, with bread-trough underneath, seemed never to have been moved from their places since Silas's mother died. These made less impression than would otherwise have been the case, because with them was a very old and mysterious-looking desk. It was a bureau
15
