so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs that you couldn’t have seen the house if it hadn’t been as big as the Capitol at Washington.
“‘Here’s where I have to trail,’ says I to myself. I thought before that she seemed to be in moderate circumstances, at least. ‘This must be the Governor’s mansion, or the Agricultural Building of a new World’s Fair, anyhow. I’d better go back to the village and get posted by the postmaster, or drug the druggist for some information.’
“In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View House. The only excuse for the name was a bay horse grazing in the front yard. I set my sample-case down, and tried to be ostensible. I told the landlord I was taking orders for plate-glass.
“‘I don’t want no plates,’ says he, ‘but I do need another glass molasses-pitcher.’
“By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answering questions.
“‘Why’, says he, ‘I thought everybody knowed who lived in the big white house on the hill. It’s Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and the finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They’re the oldest family in the State. That was his daughter that got off the train. She’s
