standing but the posts, some of which could hardly be said to stand, but
declining from the perpendicular, were only kept from falling by the
bushes. The lane was so rough and so bad from want of mending that they
could only walk the impatient horse, and at times the jolting was
extremely unpleasant.

Sometimes they had to stoop down in the trap to pass under the drooping
boughs of elms and other trees, which not having been cut for years,
hung over and almost blocked the track. From the hedges the brambles and
briars extended out into the road, so that the wheels of the dog-cart
brushed them, and they would evidently have entirely shut up the way had
not waggons occasionally gone through and crushed their runners. The
meadows on either hand were brown with grass that had not been mown,
though the time for mowing had long since gone by, while the pastures
were thick with rushes and thistles. Though so extensive there were
only two or three cows in them, and these old and poor, and as it were
broken-down. No horses were visible, nor any men at work.

There were other fields which had once grown wheat, but were now so
choked with weeds as to be nothing but a wilderness. As they approached
the farmhouse where the old gentleman dwelt, the signs of desolation
became more numerous. There were walls that had fallen, and never been
repaired, around whose ruins the nettles flourished. There were holes in
the roofs of the sheds exposing the rafters.

Trees had fallen and lay as they fell, rotting away, and not even cut up
for firewood. Railings had decayed till there was nothing left but a few
stumps; gates had dropped from their hinges, and nothing of them
remained but small bits of rotten board attached to rusty irons. In the
garden all was confusion, the thistles rose higher than the gooseberry
bushes, and burdocks looked in at the windows. From the wall of the
house a pear that had been trained there had fallen away, and hung
suspended, swinging with every puff; the boughs, driven against the
windows, had broken the panes in the adjacent casement; other panes
which had been broken were stuffed up with wisps of hay.

Tiles had slipped from the roof, and the birds went in and out as they
listed. The remnants of the tiles lay cracked upon the ground beneath
the eaves just as they had fallen. No hand had touched them; the hand of
man indeed had touched nothing. Bevis, whose eyes were everywhere, saw
all these things in a min