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Rh got to wonderin' more and more, if Isabel had got her talkin'-machine yet. I had to be in Boston on Wednesday followin' (this was a Saturday) and I decided if I really wanted to find out, I better drop in at Janses' when 'twas handy.

The first part of the Janse road goes through some woods, and the leaves of the trees 'long the side brushed the spokes of the wheels of our buggy every now and then, as Nellie and me threaded our way through it. Seemed 's if the branches had grown thicker. Seemed, too, 's if the grass ribbons in the middle of the road were a little higher and ranker than I remembered. I hoped they weren't all dead and buried up at the Janses'. After I'd crossed two old rotten bridges in awful repair, and forded two brooks runnin' willy nilly straight 'cross my path, I began to feel pretty certain I'd find the Janse house deserted, or burned to the ground, one of the two. But I didn't! Neither one!

I don't know as I have ever been so surprised in my life as I was when I broke out of the piece of pine-grove beside the cemetery, a quarter of a mile before you come to the Janse house. I was expectin', of course, to see the meadow stretched out before me, the same as usual, simmerin' in the late afternoon sunshine, with a haze, like steam, broodin' over it, reachin' away miles and