He had sometimes wondered where it led but he had never explored it . Now he had a sudden whim to do so and turned into it . It was even rougher and lonelier than the other ; between the ruts the grasses grew long and thickly ; sometimes the pine boughs met overhead ; again , the trees broke away to reveal wonderful glimpses of gleaming water , purple islets , dark feathery coasts . Still , the road seemed to lead nowhere and Alan was half repenting the impulse which had led him to choose it when he suddenly came out from the shadow of the pines and found himself gazing on a sight which amazed him . Before him was a small peninsula running out into the lake and terminating in a long sandy point . Beyond it was a glorious sweep of sunset water . The peninsula itself seemed barren and sandy , covered for the most part with scrub firs and spruces , through which the narrow road wound on to what was the astonishing ; feature in the landscape -- a grey and weather-beaten house built almost at the extremity of the point and shadowed from the western light by a thick plantation of tall pines behind it . It was the house which puzzled Alan . He had never known there was any house near the lake shore -- had never heard mention made of any ; yet here was one , and one which was evidently occupied , for a slender spiral of smoke was curling upward from it on the chilly spring air . It could not be a fisherman 's dwelling , for it was large and built after a quaint tasteful design . The longer Alan looked at it the more his wonder grew . The people living here were in the bounds of his congregation . How then was it that he had never seen or heard of them ? He sauntered slowly down the road until he saw that it led directly to the house and ended in the yard . Then he turned off in a narrow path to the shore . He was not far from the house now and he scanned it observantly as he went past . The barrens swept almost up to its door in front but at the side , sheltered from the lake winds by the pines , was a garden where there was a fine show of gay tulips and golden daffodils . No living creature was visible and , in spite of the blossoming geraniums and muslin curtains at the windows and the homely spiral of smoke , the place had a lonely , almost untenanted , look . When Alan reached the shore he found that it was of a much more open and less rocky nature than the part which he had been used to frequent . The beach was of sand and the scrub barrens dwindled down to it almost insensibly .
To right and left fir-fringed points ran out into the lake , shaping a little cove with the house XXXXX its curve .
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