I went up on the porch of a pinktrimmed house and peered through the single window. What I saw was prosaics enough—a room with a couple of chairs, a table, a couch, a kerosene lamp. A ladder led upstairs to a sleeping loft. The grove was a mystery. Why were those little houses there? Why were they empty and yet at the same time cared for? Who owned them? It was eerie to see these miniatures huddled together against all that space. I half expected some guardian toe rushing out and ask me what I was doing there.
I suppose my enchanted village was some sort of camp meeting ground, used a few weeks each summer. I never did find out. On that afternoon I did not linger. The sun’s rays were already slanting, the shadows longer, and my hill still lay ahead of me. Again I plunged into the underbrush. (breaking through at last to a rutted road scored with puddles.) But at the first turning I reached the foot of the hill, my hill, open and placed in the lengthened sunshine. Its thin meadow grass had turned brown, a stone wall that once enclosed the pasture had fallen a