its protecting branches. Back of the tollhouse was a neatly fenced
garden, well filled with old-fashioned flowers; and, still farther on, a
good-sized house, from which a box-bordered path led through the garden
to the tollhouse.

It was a remark that had been made frequently, both by strangers and
residents in that part of the country, that if it had not been for the
obvious disadvantages of a toll-gate, this house and garden, with its
grounds and fields, would be a good enough home for anybody. When he
happened to hear this remark Captain John Asher, who kept the toll-gate,
was wont to say that it was a good enough home for him, even with the
toll-gate, and its obvious disadvantages.

It was on a morning in early summer, when the garden had grown to be so
red and white and yellow in its flowers, and so green in its leaves and
stalks, that the box which edged the path was beginning to be
unnoticed, that a girl sat in a small arbor standing on a slight
elevation at one side of the garden, and from which a view could be had
both up and down the road. She was rather a slim girl, though tall
enough; her hair was dark, her eyes were blue, and she sat on the back
of a rustic bench with her feet resting upon the seat; this position she
had taken that she might the better view the road.

With both her hands this girl held a small telescope which she was
endeavoring to fix upon a black spot a mile or more away upon the road.
It was difficult for her to hold the telescope steadily enough to keep
the object-glass upon the black spot, and she had a great deal of
trouble in the matter of focusing, pulling out and pushing in the
smaller cylinder in a manner which showed that she was not accustomed to
the use of this optical instrument.