possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had

been decently interred it was not in good taste to talk about that
eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of tender years. Mirabel

thought this very harsh. The Cottons had not much to boast of.
How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she

were forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?
September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October.

One Friday evening Diana came over.
"I'd a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over

to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town.
But we can't get one of our horses to go, for they'll all be in use

tomorrow, and your pony is lame. . .so I suppose we can't go."
"Why can't we walk?" suggested Anne. "If we go straight back

through the woods we'll strike the West Grafton road not far from
the Kimball place. I was through that way last winter and I know

the road. It's no more than four miles and we won't have to walk
home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us. He'll be only

too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they
say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse."

It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the
following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover's Lane to

the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into
the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were

all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple
stillness and peace.

"It's as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full
of mellow stained light, isn't it?" said Anne dreamily. "It doesn't

seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent,
like running in a church."

"We MUST hurry though," said Diana, glancing at her watch.
"We've left ourselves little enough time as it is."

"Well, I'll walk fast but don't ask me to talk," said Anne, quickening
her pace. "I just want to drink the day's loveliness in. . .I feel as

if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and
I'll take a sip at every step."

Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in "drinking it in" that
Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road.

She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it
the most fortunate mistake of her life. They came out finally to a

lonely, grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of
spruce saplings.

"Why, where are we?" exclaimed Diana in bewilderment. "This isn't
the West Grafton road."

"No, it's the base line road in Middle Grafton," said Anne, rather
shamefacedly. "I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork.

I don't know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles
from Kimballs' still."

"Then we can't get there by five, for it's half past four now,"
said Diana, with a despairing look at her watch. "We'll arrive

after they have had their tea, and they'll have all the bother of
getting ours over again."

"We'd better turn back and go home," suggested Anne humbly.
But Diana, after consideration, vetoed this.

"No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we
have come this far"

A few yards further on the girls came to a place where
the road forked again.

"Which of these do we take?" asked Diana dubiously.
Anne shook her head.

"I don't know and we can't afford to make any more mistakes. Here
is a gate and a lane leading right into the wood. There must be a

house at the other side. Let us go down and inquire."
"What a romantic old lane this it," said Diana, as they walked

along its twists and turns. It ran under patriarchal old firs
whose branches met above, creating a perpetual gloom in which

nothing except moss could grow. On either hand were brown wood
floors, crossed here and there by fallen lances of sunlight.

All was very still and remote, as if the world and the cares
of the world were far away.

"I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest," said
Anne in a hushed tone. "Do you suppose we'll ever find our way

back to the real world again, Diana? We shall presently come to a
palace with a spellbound princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess in it, I think."

Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed of a palace,
but of a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have

been in this province of conventionalwooden farmhouses, all as
much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the

same seed. Anne stopped short in rapture and Diana exclaimed,
"Oh, I know where we are now. That is the little stone house where

Miss Lavendar Lewis lives. . .Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think.
I've often heard of it but I've never seen it before. Isn't it a

romantic spot?"
"It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined," said

Anne delightedly. "It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream."
The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of

red Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered
two dormer windows, with quaintwooden hoods over them, and two

great chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant
growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and

turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints.
Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate

where the girls were standing opened. The house bounded it on
one side; on the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke,

so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high,
green bank. On the right and left the tall, dark spruces spread

their palm-like branches over it; but below it was a little meadow,
green with clover aftermath, sloping down to the blue loop of the

Grafton River. No other house or clearing was in sight. . .nothing
but hills and valleys covered with feathery young firs.

"I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is," speculated Diana as
they opened the gate into the garden. "They say she is very peculiar."

"She'll be interesting then," said Anne decidedly. "Peculiar people
are always that at least, whatever else they are or are not.

Didn't I tell you we would come to an enchanted palace?
I knew the elves hadn't woven magic over that lane for nothing."

"But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess" target="_blank" title="n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人">princess," laughed
Diana. "She's an old maid. . .she's forty-five and quite gray,

I've heard."
"Oh, that's only part of the spell," asserted Anne confidently.

"At heart she's young and beautiful still. . .and if we only knew
how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again.

But we don't know how. . .it's always and only the prince who knows that
. . .and Miss Lavendar's prince hasn't come yet. Perhaps some fatal

mischance has befallen him. . .though THAT'S against the law of all
fairy tales."

"I'm afraid he came long ago and went away again," said Diana.
"They say she used to be engaged to Stephan Irving. . .Paul's

father. . .when they were young. But they quarreled and parted."
"Hush," warned Anne. "The door is open."

The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked
at the open door. There was a patter of steps inside and a rather

odd little personage presented herself. . .a girl of about
fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that

it did really seem as if it stretched "from ear to ear," and two
long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.

"Is Miss Lewis at home?" asked Diana.
"Yes, ma'am. Come in, ma'am. I'll tell Miss Lavendar you're here,