EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 15 
hidden in a little valley between two round green 
hills. In its centre is a bubbling spring of clear water 
that never freezes in winter or dries up in summer. 
That afternoon we had explored the Haunted House 
at the edge of the wood, with its date-stone of 1809, 
ten-foot fireplace, and vast stone chimney, and had 
fearfully approached that door under which a dark 
stream of blood flowed a half-century ago, on the day 
when all humans stopped dwelling in that house 
forever. 
Little John climbed puffingly up through two sets 
of floor-beams, to where a few warped hemlock 
boards still make a patch of flooring in the attic. 
Under a rafter he found a cunningly concealed 
hidey-hole, drilled like a flicker’s nest into one of 
the soft mica-schist stones of the chimney. Inside 
were a battered home-made top, whittled out of a 
solid block, and two flint Indian arrow-heads, ghosts 
of some long-dead boyhood which still lingered in 
the little attic chamber. 
In the spring twilight we stole out by a side door, 
so that we might not cross that stained threshold. 
A lilac bush, which in a century of growth had be- 
come a thicket of purple, scented bloom, surrounded 
the whole side of the house; while beside a squat but- 
tonwood tree of monstrous girth was the dome of a 
Dutch oven. We followed a dim path fringed with 
white-thorn and sprays of sweet viburnum blossoms. 
From the distance, beyond the farther hill, came 
the crooning of the toads on their annual pilgrimage 
back to the marsh where they were born. In time we 
