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Allan dug the toe of his sandal into the loose drift of dead leaves and pine-spills that littered the broad piazza

"It'll need more than a vacuum cleaner to put this in shape!" said he "Well, the sooner we get at it, the better We'd do well to take a look at the inside"

The front door, one-time built of oaken planks studded with hand-worked nails and banded with huge wrought-iron hinges, now hung there a rated

With no tools but his naked hands Stern tore and battered it away A thick, pungent haze of dust arose, yellow in the ht that presently, for the first tiht across the cob-webbed front hallway, through the aperture

Rooaloas practically stripped bare by tiirl "The sao But--well, neverhomelike Make me a broom, dear, and I'll sweep out the worst of it at once"

Talking now in terms of practical detail, with romance for the hour displaced by harsh reality, they exas, only dust-piles, splinters and punky rubbish re drunkenly awry froht wanly illuminated the wreck of all that had once been the lavish hos, furniture, bibelots, treasures of all kinds now lay coled in mournful decay In what had evidently been the rand piano noas only a ments of wire and a considerable heap of wood-detritus, with a couple of corroded pedals buried in the pile

"And this was the fahter, that the papers used to talk sowith her foot a few mournful bits of rubbish that lay near the piano

"Sic transit gloriahis head "You and she were the sahts they went on into what had been the kitchen The stove, though heavily bedded in rust, retained its form, for the solid steel had resisted even the fearful lapse of vanished time

"After I scour that with sand and water," said Stern, "and polish up these alulass from up-stairs where it isn't needed, you won't know this place Yes, and I'll have running water in here, too--and electricity from the power-plant, and--"