It was getting cold up in the pear-tree. Joyce shivered and stepped down
to the limb below, but paused in her descent to watch a peddler going
down the road with a pack on his back.

"Oh, he is stopping at the gate with the big scissors!" she cried, so
interested that she spoke aloud. "I must wait to see if it opens."

There was something mysterious about that gate across the road. Like
Monsieur Gréville's, it was plain and solid, reaching as high as the
wall. Only the lime-trees and the second story windows of the house
could be seen above it. On the top it bore an iron medallion, on which
was fastened a huge pair of scissors. There was a smaller pair on each
gable of the house, also.

During the three months that Joyce had been in Monsieur Gréville's
home, she had watched every day to see it open; but if any one ever
entered or left the place, it was certainly by some other way than this
queer gate.

What lay beyond it, no one could tell. She had questioned Gabriel the
coachman, and Berthé the maid, in vain. Madame Gréville said that she
remembered having heard, when a child, that the man who built it was
named _Ciseaux_, and that was why the symbol of this name was hung over
the gate and on the gables. He had been regarded as half crazy by his
neighbors. The place was still owned by a descendant of his, who had
gone to Algiers, and left it in charge of two servants.

The peddler rang the bell of the gate several times, but failing to
arouse any one, shouldered his pack and went off grumbling. Then Joyce