The setting sun had turned the landscape into shining gold and even the pines and pampas grass seemed painted with fire. Albert Lee brought the bus to a halt at the entrance to a tree-lined road that curved up a long grassy slope toward a large and very old country house set in a stand of willows and live oaks. Weathered and worn, a rectangular and symmetrical facade in the Federal style, badly in need of paint, it retained an air of self-contained simplicity that reminded Danziger of a Shaker church he had seen up in eastern Canada. It had a cedar shake roof, silver gray with age, two huge yellow limestone chimneys on either side of the house, a wide veranda with a few plain hardwood chairs and one wicker couch. The glass in the tall sash windows was rippled with age. There were outbuildings farther back, chicken coops and possibly a workshop, a fenced-in pasture, what looked like a summer kitchen, and one ancient wooden barn, charcoal gray trimmed in navy blue. Lights were on inside the house and in some of the outbuildings, and from a distance came a low muttering sound that Danziger was able to identify as a generator.
