dwellings,--this was the spot discovered and seized to themselves some
four or five years since by certain migratory pioneers of fashion.

An old two-story farmhouse, with four plain rooms of generous dimensions
on each floor, in which the first delighted summer party had divided
itself, glad and grateful to occupy them double and even treble bedded,
had become the "hotel," with a name up across the gable of the new
wing,--"Giant's Cairn House,"--and the eight original rooms made into
fourteen. The wing was clapped on by its middle; rushing out at the
front toward the road to meet the summer tide of travel as it should
surge by, and hold up to it, arrestively, its titular sign-board; the
other half as expressively making its bee-line toward the river and the
mountain view at back,--just as each fresh arrival, seeking out the
preferable rooms, inevitably did. Behind, upon the other side, an L
provided new kitchens; and over these, within a year, had been carried
up a second story, with a hall for dancing, tableaux, theatricals, and
traveling jugglers.

Up to this hostelry whirled daily, from the southward, the great
six-horse stage; and from the northward came thrice a week wagons or
coaches "through the hills," besides such "extras" as might drive down
at any hour of day or night.

Round the smooth curve of broad, level road that skirted the ledges from
the upper village pranced four splendid bays; and after them rollicked
and swayed, with a perfect delirium of wheels and springs, the great
black and yellow bodied vehicle, like a huge bumble-bee buzzing back
with its spoil of a June day to the hive. The June sunset was golden and
rosy upon the hills and cliffs, and Giant's Cairn stood burnished
against the eastern blue. Gay companies, scattered about piazzas and