The long lazy days on the farm had begun.
From the mountain side the farm looked down on a wide sweeping valley of woods and fields.

The old house straggled along the road, with addition after addition built on through generations by many men and women.

Here lay the history, unread, of the family of Roger Gale.

Inside there were steps up and down from one part to another, queer crooks in narrow passageways.
The lower end was attached to the woodshed, and the woodshed to the barn.
Above the house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the house.

The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond.
At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill.