county half the day."

A pack of hounds that had been sleeping under the sassafras
bushes across the road came fawning to his feet, and he pushed
them impatiently aside.

"I was thinkin'," began Peterkin, with an uncertain cough, "that
I might manage to send over my big white Tom, an', bein' blind,
maybe she wouldn't know the difference."

Christopher shook his head.

"Oh, it's no use," he replied, speaking with an air of
superiority. "She could pick out that cat among a million, I
believe, with a single touch. Well, there's no help for it. Down,
Spot--down, I say, Sir!"

With a leisurely movement he swung himself from the fence,
stopping to wipe his brow with his blue cotton sleeve. Then he
went whistling defiantly down the way to the Hall, turning at
last into a sunken road that trailed by an abandoned ice-pond
where bullfrogs were croaking hoarsely in the rushes.



CHAPTER II. The Owner of Blake Hall

As they followed the descending road between flowering chestnuts,
Blake Hall rose gradually into fuller view, its great oaks
browned by the approaching twilight and the fading after-glow