`` Oh , Jim Conway 's place ! '' said Caleb . `` Did n't know that was what he called it . Sartin I kin tell you whar ' to find it . You see that road out thar ' ? Well , just follow it straight along for a mile and a half till you come to a blacksmith 's forge . Jim Conway 's house is just this side of it on the right -- back from the road a smart piece and no other handy . You ca n't mistake it . '' John Lincoln did not expect to mistake it , once he found it ; he knew by heart what it appeared like from Sidney 's description : an old stately mansion of mellowed brick , covered with ivy and set back from the highway amid fine ancestral trees , with a pine-grove behind it , a river to the left , and a harbour beyond . He strode along the road in the warm , ruddy sunshine of early evening . It was not a bad-looking road at all ; the farmsteads sprinkled along it were for the most part snug and wholesome enough ; yet somehow it was different from what he had expected it to be . And there was no harbour or glimpse of distant sea visible . Had the hotel-keeper made a mistake ? Perhaps he had meant some other James Conway . Presently he found himself before the blacksmith 's forge . Beside it was a rickety , unpainted gate opening into a snake-fenced lane feathered here and there with scrubby little spruces . It ran down a bare hill , crossed a little ravine full of young white-stemmed birches , and up another bare hill to an equally bare crest where a farmhouse was perched -- a farmhouse painted a stark , staring yellow and the ugliest thing in farmhouses that John Lincoln had ever seen , even among the log shacks of the west . He knew now that he had been misdirected , but as there seemed to be nobody about the forge he concluded that he had better go to the yellow house and inquire within . He passed down the lane and over the little rustic bridge that spanned the brook . Just beyond was another home-made gate of poles .
Lincoln opened it , or rather he had his hand on the hasp of twisted withes which secured it , when he was suddenly arrested by the apparition of a girl , who flashed around the curve of young birch XXXXX and stood before him with panting breath and quivering lips .
Beside among at beyond for from in to with within