a dingy red. One or two were slowly assuming the russet of age; while
the uncovered beams that were to be seen through the broken windows of
their second stories showed that either the taste or the vanity of
their proprietors had led them to undertake a task which they were
unable to accomplish. The whole were grouped in a manner that aped
the streets of a city, and were evidently so arranged by the
directions of one who looked to the wants of posterity rather than to
the convenience of the present incumbents. Some three or four of the
better sort of buildings, in addition to the uniformity of their
color, were fitted with green blinds, which, at that season at least,
were rather strangely contrasted to the chill aspect of the lake, the
mountains, the forests, and the wide fields of snow. Before the doors
of these pretending dwellings were placed a few saplings, either
without branches or possessing only the feeble shoots of one or two
summers’ growth, that looked not unlike tall grenadiers on post near
the threshold of princes. In truth, the occupants of these favored
habitations were the nobles of Templeton, as Marmaduke was its king.
They were the dwellings of two young men who were cunning in the law;
an equal number of that class who chaffered to the wants of the
community under the title of storekeepers; and a disciple of
Aesculapius, who, for a novelty, brought more subjects into the world
than he sent out of it. In the midst of this incongruous group of
dwellings rose the mansion of the Judge, towering above all its
neighbors. It stood in the centre of an inclosure of several acres,
which was covered with fruit-trees. Some of the latter had been left
by the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclination
of age, therein forming a very marked contrast to the infant
plantations that peered over most of the picketed fences of the
village. In addition to this show of cultivation were two rows of
young Lombardy poplars, a tree but lately introduced into America,