could never indulge a more lawless fancy towards any chink or cranny
about it than a desire to "point" the same with a bit of mortar.

Why it was that my ancestor, who built the old house, and who was not a
bit better educated or farther-travelled than my father, had built a
pretty one, whilst my father built an ugly one, is one of the many
things I do not know, and wish I did.

From the old sketches of it which my grandfather painted on the parlour
handscreens, I think it must have been like a larger edition of the
farm; that is, with long mullioned windows, a broad and gracefully
proportioned doorway with several shallow steps and quaintly-ornamented
lintel; bits of fine work and ornamentation about the woodwork here and
there, put in as if they had been done, not for the look of the thing,
but for the love of it, and whitewash over the house-front, and over the
apple-trees in the orchard.

That was what our ancestor's home was like; and it was the sort of house
that became Walnut-tree Academy, where Jem and I went to school.




CHAPTER II.

_Sable_:--"Ha, you! A little more upon the dismal (_forming their
countenances_); this fellow has a good mortal look, place him near
the corpse; that wainscoat face must be o' top of the stairs; that
fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some
strange misery) at the end of the hall. So--but I'll fix you all