atched me from the window. It was
rather a relief to be rid of that cloud of witnesses; and I began to
look about me for a way to the back of the house. "Perhaps there'll
be somebody in the garden," I thought. I found a way across the moat,
scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, and got into the garden.
A few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the flower-beds, and the
ancient house looked down on them indifferently. Its garden side was
plainer and severer than the other: the long granite front, with its few
windows and steep roof, looked like a fortress-prison. I walked around
the farther wing, went up some disjointed steps, and entered the deep
twilight of a narrow and incredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide
enough for one person to slip through, and its branches met overhead. It
was like the ghost of a box-walk, its lustrous green all turning to
the shadowy greyness of the avenues. I walked on and on, the branches
hitting me in the face and springing back with a dry rattle; and at
length I came out on the grassy top of the _chemin de ronde_. I walked
along it to the gate-tower, looking down into the court, which was just
below me. Not a human being was in sight; and neither were the dogs. I
found a flight of steps in the thickness of the wall and went down them;
and when I emerged again into the court, there stood the circle of dogs,
the golden-brown one a little ahead of the others, the black greyhound
shivering in the rear.

"Oh, hang it--you uncomfortable beasts, you!" I exclaimed, my voice
startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless, watching me.
I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my approaching
the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I had a
feeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yet
they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and
they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if
they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked
at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their
busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human
lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten
animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them
into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed and
weary eyes the more preposterous the idea became. With the windows of
that