led directly to the farm-building, and pushed open the front gate as
Cressy's light dress vanished round an angle at the rear of the house.

The house of the McKinstrys rose, or rather stretched, itself before
him, in all the lazy ungainliness of Southwestern architecture. A
collection of temporary make-shifts of boards, of logs, of canvas,
prematurely decayed, and in some instances abandoned for a newer
erection, or degraded to mere outhouses--it presented with singular
frankness the nomadic and tentative disposition of its founder. It had
been repaired without being improved; its additions had seemed only
to extend its primitive ugliness over a larger space. Its roofs were
roughly shingled or rudely boarded and battened, and the rafters of
some of its "lean-to's" were simply covered with tarred canvas. As if
to settle any doubt of the impossibility of this heterogeneous mass
ever taking upon itself any picturesque combination, a small building of
corrugated iron, transported in sections from some remoter locality, had
been set up in its centre. The McKinstry ranch had long been an eyesore
to the master: even that morning he had been mutely wondering from what
convolution of that hideous chrysalis the bright butterfly Cressy had
emerged. It was with a renewal of this curiosity that he had just seen
her flutter back to it again.

A yellow dog who had observed him hesitating in doubt where he should
enter, here yawned, rose from the sunlight where he had been blinking,
approached the master with languid politeness, and then turned towards
the iron building as if showing him the way. Mr. Ford followed him
cautiously, painfully conscious that his hypocritical canine introducer
was only availing himself of an opportunity to gain ingress into the
house, and was leading him as a responsible accomplice to probable
exposure and disgrace. His expectation was quickly realized: a lazily