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A house of native stone built into and a seaward, others nosing north and south areysun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame; this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it

Like the craggy vertebrae of a half-buried fossil splitting the sod, a ragged line of rock rose as a barrier to inland winds; the foreland, set here and there with tiny lawns and pockets of bright flowers, fell away to the cliffs; and here, sheer wet black rocks fronted the eternal battering of the Atlantic

As the phaeton drew up under a pillared porte-cochere, one or two servants appeared; a rather ih the doors into the hall where, in a wide chiliht slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden glooainst a sky of azure stirred like burnished foliage in a tapestry

"There is nobody here, of course," observed Miss Landis to Siward as they halted in front of the fire-place; "the season opens to-day in this county, you see" She shrugged her pretty shoulders: "And the women who don't shoot make the first field-luncheon a function"

She turned, nodded her adieux, then, over her shoulder, casually: "If you haven't an appointun-room"

"I'll be there in about threedown at the Saga, attentive, always the gentlehed "Take his have the run of the house"

So he followed a servant to the floor above where a sh a corridor and into that heavy wing of the house which fronted the sea

"Tea is served in the gun-rooive place to aman who turned on the bath, laid out fresh rai, "Scotch or Irish, sir?" presently effaced himself

Before he quenched his own thirst Siward filled a bowl and set it on the floor, and it see and slobbering in the limpid icy water

"It's the salt air, lass as though accepting the excuse on his own account