The wind had dropped
and a faint haze on the horizon showed that a fog was
waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the turn of the tide;
but all about him fields and woods were steeped in
golden light.
He drove past grey-shingled farm-houses in orchards,
past hay-fields and groves of oak, past villages with
white steeples rising sharply into the fading sky; and at
last, after stopping to ask the way of some men at
work in a field, he turned down a lane between high
banks of goldenrod and brambles. At the end of the
lane was the blue glimmer of the river; to the left,
standing in front of a clump of oaks and maples, he
saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling
from its clapboards.
On the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the
open sheds in which the New Englander shelters his
farming implements and visitors "hitch" their "teams."
Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the shed, and
after tying them to a post turned toward the house.
The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-
field; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of
dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-
house of trellis-work that had once been white,
surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow
and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim.
Archer leaned for a while against the gate. No one
was in sight, and not a sound came from the open
windows of the house: a grizzled Newfoundland dozing
before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as
the arrowless Cupid.
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