all the better because the larches, with their
eternal murmuring, have been laid low and
carted away to the sawmill.




STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT


THERE had always been strange
stories about the house, but it
was a sensible, comfortable sort
of a neighborhood, and people
took pains to say to one another that there
was nothing in these tales -- of course not!
Absolutely nothing! How could there be?
It was a matter of common remark, however,
that considering the amount of money the
Nethertons had spent on the place, it was
curious they lived there so little. They were
nearly always away, -- up North in the sum-
mer and down South in the winter, and over
to Paris or London now and then, -- and when
they did come home it was only to entertain
a number of guests from the city. The place
was either plunged in gloom or gayety. The
old gardener who kept house by himself in
the cottage at the back of the yard had things
much his own way by far the greater part of