Valancy had walked out to Roaring Abel’s house on the Mistawis road under a sky of purple and amber¹, with a queer exhilaration and expectancy² in her heart. Back there, behind her, her mother and Cousin Stickles were crying—over themselves, not over her. But here the wind was in her face, soft, dew-wet, cool, blowing along the grassy³ roads. Oh, she loved the wind! The robins⁴ were whistling sleepily in the firs along the way and the moist air was fragrant⁵ with the tang of balsam. Big cars went purring past in the violet dusk—the stream of summer tourists to Muskoka had already begun—but Valancy did not envy any of their occupants. Muskoka cottages might be charming, but beyond, in the sunset skies, among the spires⁶ of the firs, her Blue Castle towered. She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would not be littered with them.

 

Roaring Abel’s rambling⁷, tumble-down old house was situated⁸ about three miles from the village, on the very edge of “up back,” as the sparsely⁹ settled, hilly, wooded country around Mistawis was called vernacularly¹⁰. It did not, it must be confessed, look much like a Blue Castle.

 

It had once been a snug¹¹ place enough in the days when Abel Gay had been young and prosperous, and the punning, arched sign over the gate—“A. Gay, Carpenter,” had been fine and freshly painted. Now it was a faded,

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