The Enchanted Barn (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill
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and looked at the place intently as he passed by. He was convinced that this was the place. He did not need to go on and find Allister Avenue—though he did, and then turned back again, stopping by the roadside. He got out of the car, looking all the time at the barn and seeing it in the light of the girl's eyes. As he walked up the grassy slope to the front doors, he had some conception of what it must be to live so that this would seem grand as a home. And he showed he was not spoiled by his life in the lap of luxury, for he was able to get a glimpse of the grandeur of the spot and the dignity of the building with its long simple lines and rough old stones.
The sun was just going down as he stood there looking up. It touched the stones, and turned them into jewelled settings, glorifying the old structure into a palace. The evening was sweet with the voices of birds not far away. One above the rest, clear and occasional, high in the elm-tree over the barn, a wood-thrush spilling its silver notes down to the brook that echoed them back in a lilt. The young man took off his hat and stood in the evening air, listening and looking. He could see the poetry of it, and somehow he could see the girl's face as if she stood there beside him, her wonderful eyes lighted as they had been when she told him how beautiful it was there. She was right. It was beautiful, and it was a lovely soul that could see it and feel what a home this would make in spite of the ignominy of its being nothing but a barn. Some dim memory, some faint remembrance, of a stable long ago, and the glory of it, hovered on the horizon of his mind; but his education had not been along religious lines, and he did not put the thing into a definite thought. It was just a kind of sensing of a great fact of the universe which he perhaps might have understood in a former existence.
Then he turned to the building itself. He was practical, after all, even if he was a dreamer. He tried the big padlock. How did they get into this thing? How had the girl got in? Should he be obliged to break into his own barn?
He walked down the slope, around to the back, and found the entrance close to the ladder; but the place was quite dark within the great stone walls, and he peered into the gloomy basement with disgust at the dirt and murk. Only here and there, where a crack looked toward the setting sun, a bright needle of light sent a shaft through to let one see the inky shadows. He was half turning back, but reflected that the girl had said she went up a ladder to the middle floor. If she had gone, surely he could. Again that sense that she was stronger than he rebuked him. He got out his pocket flashlight and stepped within the gloom determinedly. Holding the flash-light above his head, he surveyed his property disapprovingly; then with the light in his hand he climbed in a gingerly way up the dusty rounds to the middle floor.
As he stood alone in the dusky shadows of the big barn, with the blackness of the hay-loft overhead, the darkness pierced only by the keen blade of the flash-light and a few feebler darts from the sinking sun, the poetry suddenly left the old barn, and a shudder ran through him. To think of trying to live here! How horrible!
Yet still that same feeling that the girl had more nerve than he had forced him to walk the length and breadth of the floor, peering carefully into the dark corners and acquainting himself fully with the bare, big place; and also to climb part way up the ladder to the loft and send his flash-light searching through its dusty hay-strewn recesses.
With a feeling utterly at variance with the place he turned away in disgust, and made his way down the ladders again, out into the sunset.
In that short time the evening had arrived. The sky had flung out banners and pennants, pencilled by a fringe of fine saplings like slender brown threads against the sky. The earth was sinking into dusk, and off by the brook the frogs were tinkling like tiny answering silver rattles. The smell of earth and growing stole upon his senses, and even as he gazed about him a single star burned into being in the clear ether above him. The birds were still now, and the frogs with the brook for accompaniment held the stage. Once more the charm of the place stole over him; and he stood with hat removed, and wondered no longer that the girl was willing to live here. A conviction grew within him that somehow he must make it possible for her to do so, that things would not be right and as they ought to be unless he did. In fact, he had a curiosity to have her do it and see whether it could be done.
He went slowly down to his car at last with lingering backward looks. The beauty of the situation was undoubted, and called for admiration. It was too bad that only a barn should occupy it. He would like to see a fine house reared upon it. But somehow in his heart he was glad that it was not a fine house standing there against the evening sky, and that it was possible for him to let the girl try her experiment of living there. Was it possible? Could there be any mistake? Could it be that he had not found the right barn, after all? He must make sure, of course.
But still he turned his car toward home, feeling reasonably sure that he had found the right spot; and, as he drove swiftly back along the way, he was thinking, and all his thoughts were woven with the softness of the spring evening and permeated with its sounds. He seemed to be in touch with nature as he had never been before.
At dinner that night he asked his father:
"Did Grandfather Graham ever live out on the old Glenside Road, father?"
A pleasant twinkle came in the elder Graham's eyes.
"Sure!" he said. "Lived there myself when I was five years old, before the old man got to speculating and made his pile, and we got too grand to stay in a farmhouse. I can remember rolling down a hill under a great big tree, and your Uncle Billy pushing me into the brook that ran at the foot. We boys used to wade in that brook, and build dams, and catch little minnows, and sail boats. It was great sport. I used to go back holidays now and then after I got old enough to go away to school. We were living in town then, but I used to like to go out and stay at the farmhouse. It was rented to a queer old dick; but his wife was a good sort, and made the bulliest apple turnovers for us boys—and doughnuts! The old farmhouse burned down a year or so ago. But the barn is still standing. I can remember how proud your grandfather was of that barn. It was finer than any barn around, and bigger. We boys used to go up in the loft, and tumble in the hay; and once when I was a little kid I got lost in the hay, and Billy had to dig me out. I can remember how scared I was when I thought I might have to stay there forever, and have nothing to eat."
"Say, father," said the son, leaning forward eagerly, "I've a notion I'd like to have that old place in my share. Do you think it could be arranged? The boys won't care, I'm sure; they're always more for the town than the country."
"Why, yes, I guess that could be fixed up. You just see Mr. Dalrymple about it. He'll fix it up. Billy's boy got that place up river, you know. Just see the lawyer, and he'll fix it up. No reason in the world why you shouldn't have the old place if you care for it. Not much in it for money, though, I guess. They tell me property's way down out that direction now."
The talk passed to other matters, and Sidney Graham said nothing about his caller of the afternoon, nor of the trip he had taken out to see the old barn. Instead, he took his father's advice, and saw the family lawyer, Mr. Dalrymple, the first thing in the morning.
It was all arranged in a few minutes. Mr. Dalrymple called up the other heirs and the children's guardian. An office-boy hurried out with some papers, and came back with the signatures of heirs and guardians, who happened all to be within reach; and presently the control of the old farm was formally put into the hands of Mr. Sidney Graham, he having signed certain papers agreeing to take this as such and such portion of his right in the whole estate.
It had been a simple matter; and yet, when at about half-past eleven o'clock Mr. Dalrymple's stenographer laid a folded paper quietly on Sidney Graham's desk and silently left the room, he reached out and touched it with more satisfaction than he had felt in any acquisition in a long time, not excepting his last racing-car. It was not the value the paper represented, however, that pleased him, but the fact that he would now be able to do as he pleased concerning the prospective tenant for the place, and follow out a curious and interesting experiment. He wanted to study this girl and see whether she really had the nerve to go and live in a barn—a girl with a face like that to live in a barn! He wanted to see what manner of girl she was, and to have the right to watch her for a little space.
It is true that the morning light might present her in a very different aspect from that in which she had appeared the evening