of small cedars, bending low with their burden,
showered the young man's swinging shoulders
glitteringly as he brushed by.

And now that expression he wore--the indulgent
amusement of a man of the world--began to
disintegrate and show signs of change. It became
finely grave, as of a high conventionality, lofty,
assured, and mannered, as he approached the Pike
mansion. (The remotest stranger must at once
perceive that the Canaan papers could not have
called it otherwise without pain.)

It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house,
product of the 'Seventies, frowning under an
outrageously insistent mansard, capped by a cupola,
and staring out of long windows overtopped with
"ornamental" slabs. Two cast-iron deer, painted
death-gray, twins of the same mould, stood on
opposite sides of the front walk, their backs towards
it and each other, their bodies in profile to the
street, their necks bent, however, so that they
gazed upon the passer-by--yet gazed without
emotion. Two large, calm dogs guarded the top
of the steps leading to the front-door; they also
were twins and of the same interesting metal,
though honored beyond the deer by coats of black
paint and shellac. It was to be remarked that
these dogs were of no distinguishable species or
breed, yet they were unmistakably dogs; the