Let us go down and inquire . '' `` What a romantic old lane this it , '' said Diana , as they walked along its twists and turns . It ran under patriarchal old firs whose branches met above , creating a perpetual gloom in which nothing except moss could grow . On either hand were brown wood floors , crossed here and there by fallen lances of sunlight . All was very still and remote , as if the world and the cares of the world were far away . `` I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest , '' said Anne in a hushed tone . `` Do you suppose we 'll ever find our way back to the real world again , Diana ? We shall presently come to a palace with a spellbound princess in it , I think . '' Around the next turn they came in sight , not indeed of a palace , but of a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have been in this province of conventional wooden farmhouses , all as much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the same seed . Anne stopped short in rapture and Diana exclaimed , `` Oh , I know where we are now . That is the little stone house where Miss Lavendar Lewis lives ... Echo Lodge , she calls it , I think . I 've often heard of it but I 've never seen it before . Is n't it a romantic spot ? '' `` It 's the sweetest , prettiest place I ever saw or imagined , '' said Anne delightedly . `` It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream . '' The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of red Island sandstone , with a little peaked roof out of which peered two dormer windows , with quaint wooden hoods over them , and two great chimneys . The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy , finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints . Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate where the girls were standing opened . The house bounded it on one side ; on the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke , so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high , green bank . On the right and left the tall , dark spruces spread their palm-like branches over it ; but below it was a little meadow , green with clover aftermath , sloping down to the blue loop of the Grafton River .
No other house or clearing was in sight ... nothing but hills and valleys covered XXXXX feathery young firs .
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