never learned to tell time. And, indeed, what good would it have done
them when the clock was run down and stood always at the hour of noon?
But they knew where thoroughwort grows, and the wholesome goldthread;
they gathered cress and peppermint, and could tell the mushroom from
its noisome kindred. Day after day, they roamed the woods for simples
to be distilled by the father, and made into potent salves and
ointments for man and the beasties he loved better.

When Lucindy came in sight of the house, she was glad to find it open.
She had scarcely gone so far afield for years, and the reports
concerning this strange people had reached her only by hearsay. She
felt like a discoverer. In close neighborhood to the house stood a
peculiar structure,--the half-finished dwelling McNeil had attempted,
in a brief access of ambition, to build with his own hands. The
chimney, slightly curving and very ragged at the top, stood foolishly
above the unfinished lower story. Lucindy remembered hearing how Tom
had begun the chimney first, and built the house round it. But the
fulfilment of his worldly dream never came to pass; and perhaps it was
quite as well, for thereby would the unity of his existence have been
destroyed. He might have lived up to the house; he might even have
grown into a proud man, and accumulated dollars. But the bent of birth
was too much for him. A day dawned, warm and entrancing; he left his
bricks and boards in the midst, and the whole family went joyfully off
on a tramp. To Tiverton, the unfinished house continued to serve as an
immortal joke, and Tom smiled as broadly as any. He always said he
couldn't finish it; he had mislaid the plan.

A little flower-garden bloomed between the two houses, and on the
grass, by one of its clove-pink borders, sat a woman, rocking back and
forth in an ancient chair, and doing absolutely nothing. She was young,