After getting his supper he asked the proprietor if he could direct him to `` The Evergreens . '' Caleb Williams looked at his guest in bewilderment . `` Never heerd o ' such a place , '' he said . `` It is the name of Mr. Conway 's estate -- Mr. James Conway , '' explained John Lincoln . `` 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 XXXXX farmhouses that John Lincoln had ever seen , even among the log shacks of the west .
Beside along at before by from in of on to