The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on asandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long nightseemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths,fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and themat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swayingshawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder.

　　The swallows nested in the drawing-roon; the floor was strewnwith straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carriedoff this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterfliesburst from the chrysalis and pattered their life out on the windowpane.

　　Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias; the lawn wavedwith long grass; giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed carnationflowered among the cabbages; while the gentle tapping of a weed atthe window had become, on winters' nights, a drumming from sturdytrees and thorned briars which made the whole room green in summer.

　　What power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility ofnature? Mrs McNab's dream of a lady, of a child, of a plate of milk soup?

　　It had wavered over the walls like a spot of sunlight and vanished. Shehad locked the door; she had gone. It was beyond the strength of onewoman, she said. They never sent. They never wrote. There were thingsup there rotting in the drawers—it was a shame to leave them so, shesaid. The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only the Lighthouse beamentered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wallin the darkness of winter, looked with equanimity at the thistle and theswallow, the rat and the straw. Nothing now withstood them; nothingsaid no to them. Let the wind blow; let the poppy seed itself and thecarnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing-room, and the thistle thrust aside the tiles, and the butterfly sun itself onthe faded chintz of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the china lieout on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.

　　For now had come that moment, that hesitation when dawn tremblesand night pauses, when if a feather alight in the scale it will be weigheddown. One feather, and the house, sinking, falling, would have turnedand pitched downwards to the depths of darkness. In the ruined room,picnickers would have lit their kettles; lovers sought shelter there, lyingon the bare boards; and the shepherd stored his dinner on the bricks, andthe tramp slept with his coat round him to ward off the cold. Then theroof would have fallen; briars and hemlocks would have blotted outpath, step and window; would have grown, unequally but lustily overthe mound, until some trespasser, losing his way, could have told onlyby a red-hot poker among the nettles, or a scrap of china in the hemlock,that here once some one had lived; there had been a house.

　　If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale downwards, thewhole house would have plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands ofoblivion. But there was a force working; something not highly conscious;something that leered, something that lurched; something not inspired togo about its work with dignified ritual or solemn chanting. Mrs McNabgroaned; Mrs Bast creaked. They were old; they were stiff; their legsached. They came with their brooms and pails at last; they got to work.

　　All of a sudden, would Mrs McNab see that the house was ready, one ofthe young ladies wrote: would she get this done; would she get thatdone; all in a hurry. They might be coming for the summer; had lefteverything to the last; expected to find things as they had left them.

　　Slowly and painfully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring, MrsMcNab, Mrs Bast, stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from thepool of Time that was fast closing over them now a basin, now a cupboard;fetched up from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea-setone morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and air a brass fender anda set of steel fire-irons. George, Mrs Bast's son, caught the rats, and cutthe grass. They had the builders. Attended with the creaking of hingesand the sc............