Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/158

152 into a silence that lasted until we came in sight of the Camp farmhouse. It stood on the crest of a roadside upland, and looked down the beautiful valley, bathed in Sabbath sunlight, and away to the ranges of hills, so far that it was hard to say whether it was sun or shadow that dimmed their distance. Decidedly, the place was what the country people call sightly. The old house, once painted a Brandon red, crouched low to the ground, with its lean-to in the rear, and its flat-arched wood-sheds and wagon-houses, stretching away at the side to the barn, and covering the approach to it with an unbroken roof. There were flowers in the beds along the under-pinning of the house, which stood close to the street, and on one side of the door was a clump of Spanish willow; an old-fashioned June rose climbed over it from the other. An aged dog got stiffly to his feet from the threshold stone, and whimpered, as our buckboard drew up; the poultry picking about the path and among the chips, lazily made way for us, and as our wheels ceased to crunch upon the gravel, we heard hasty steps, and Reuben Camp came round the corner of the house in time to give Mrs. Makely his hand, and help her spring to the ground, which she did very