Page:Son of the wind.djvu/22

 that, instead of a woodman's shanty, he might be approaching some old, neglected country seat.

A flattening of the ascent into the almost level and a slight widening of the road ahead warned his eyes. At the far end of it he saw what seemed to be the loop of a drive. The pines thinned, and between their boughs he had glimpses of a house. The trees stopped at an abrupt clearing and immediately it was all before him—long, pale façade, long, naked piazza, and long, straight rows of windows, an austere, sharp-angled mass in the dark circle of the forest. Before he realized what it was, he knew it was nothing that he had expected. It was large, but not imposing, spacious but spare, like a place flung together for the merest utility of housing room. If that wing of the building extending to the left suggested in its proportions and weather-worn whitewash some kinship to the gate-posts, the main body of the house declared itself unhesitatingly new. After a moment’s looking he recognized what it must be: one of those lesser hotels so frequent in the redwoods of the coast mountains, but here in this high isolation, as improbable as a pony cart or a tennis racket. He was astonished to find it existing here in the middle of this lopped-off clearing, with its drive made broad for the whirl of many wheels, unused, its long verandas empty, the