There on that grassy plot that might have been a familiar dooryard of his early days, he was playing alone, gone back to childhood.

It was painted white, and there was a paling in front, and a dooryard with grass.

Their owners were grouped in the dooryard around the stoves and tables and boxes of "articles too numerous to mention," chattering over the merits and flaws of mattresses and lamps, and sitting in the chairs to find out whether or not they were comfortable.

Each day of the seven the thoroughbred with the slender legs and the tiny sensitive ears had stood in the barren dooryard before Elizabeth Landor's home.

Just out of the town northward, beyond what appeared to be the court end of Marion Street, the principal business street of the city, I had accosted a gentleman in a dooryard in front of a long, low, vine-covered, romantic-looking house.

Within the ranch house itself, or upon the dooryard without, there was no sign of a struggle or of aught unusual.