"And with eight argus-eyed inquirers watching him, Mr. Bruce can't put anything over," opined Landon, and the others agreed.
Though mid-July, it was a chilly dusk through which the two motor cars ascended the last stretch of mountain road toward the old Montgomery mansion. The sun set early behind the Green Mountains and the house, half-way up an eastern slope, appeared faintly through the shadows.
To the right, tall forest trees waved their topmost branches with an eerie, soughing sound, or stood, menacingly silent, in black, sullen majesty. Beneath them a tangled underbrush gave forth faint, rustling hints of some wild life or suddenly ceased to a grim stillness.
Then the road lay through a thick grove of aspens, close, black and shivering as they stood, sentinel like and fearsome, only dimly outlined against the dark, clouded sky. Once in the grove, the shadows were dense, and the quivering sounds seemed intensified to a muttered protest against intrusion. A strange bird gave forth a few raucous notes, and then the dread silence returned.
A quick, damp chill foreboded still water and the road followed the margin of a small lake or pond, sinister in its inky depths, which mirrored the still blacker aspen trees.
Suddenly, in a small clearing, they came upon the house. In the uncertain light it seemed enormous, shapeless and beyond all words repelling. It seemed to have a personality, defiant and forbidding, that warned of mystery and disaster. Aspen trees, tall and gaunt, grew so close that their whispering leaves brushed the windows, and crowded in protecting, huddled clumps to ward off trespassers.
No lights showed through the deep caverns of the windows, but one faint gleam flickered above the entrance door.
"Whew!" cried Landon, jumping from his seat with a thud on the stone terrace, "I won't go through that woods again! I'll go home in an aeroplane,--and I'm ready to go now!"
"So am I," said Milly, in a quivering, tearful voice. "Oh, Wynne, why did we ever come?"
"Now, now," cheered Braye, "keep your heads, it's all right. Only these confounded shadows make it impossible to know just where we're at. Here's the house, and by jinks, it's built of marble!"
"Of course," said the Professor, who was curiously feeling of the old ivy-grown stone, "this is the marble country, you know. Vermont marble was plenty enough when this house was put up."
