Pausing only long enough to make sure that I had yielded to no delusion, and that fire of some kind was burning on one of the club-house's deserted hearths, I turned in at the lower gateway.

For reasons which I need not now state, there were no bells attached to my cutter and consequently my approach was noiseless.

I was careful that it should be so, also careful to stop short of the front door and leave my horse and sleigh in the black depths of the pine-grove pressing up to the walls on either side.

I was sure that all was not as it should be inside these walls, but, as God lives, I had no idea what was amiss or how deeply my own destiny was involved in the step I was about to take.
Our club-house stands, as it may be necessary to remind you, on a knoll thickly wooded with the ancient trees I have mentioned.

These trees--all pines and of a growth unusual and of an aspect well-nigh hoary--extend only to the rear end of the house, where a wide stretch of gently undulating ground opens at once upon the eye, suggesting to all lovers of golf the admirable use to which it is put from early spring to latest fall.