grey snow the house of Tombreck, with no light
nor lowe (as the saying goes); and though we knew better than to expect
there might be living people in it, we sped down to see the place.

"There's one chance in a million she might have ventured here," I said.

A most melancholy dwelling! Dwelling indeed no more but for the
hoodie-crow, and for the fawn of the hill that years after I saw
treading over the grass-grown lintel of its door. To-night the place was
full of empty airs and ghosts of sounds inexplicable, wailing among the
cabars that jutted black and scarred mid-way from wall to wall The byre
was in a huddle of damp thatch, and strewn (as God's my judge) by the
bones of the cattle the enemy had refused to drive before them in the
sauciness of their glut A desolate garden slept about the place,
with bush and tree--once tended by a family of girls, left orphan and
desolate for evermore.

We went about on tiptoes as it might be in a house of the dead, and
peeped in at the windows at where had been chambers lit by the cheerful
cruisie or dancing with peat-fire flame--only the dark was there,
horrible with the odours of char, or the black joist against the
dun sky. And then we went to the front door (for Tombreck was a
gentle-house), and found it still on the hinges, but hanging half back
to give view to the gloomy interior. It was a spectacle to chill the
heart, a house burned in hatred, the hearth of many songs and the
chambers of love, merrymaking, death, and the children's feet, robbed of
every interest but its ghosts and the memories of them they came to.

"It were useless to look here; she is not here," I said in a whisper to
my comrade.

He stood with his bonnet in his hand, dumb for a space, then speaking
with a choked utterance.

"Our homes, our homes, Colin!" he cried. "Have I not had the happy
nights in those same walls, those harmless hospitable halls, those dead
halls?"

And he looked broadcast over the country-side.

"The curse of Conan and the black stones on the hands that wrought this
work!" he said. "Poison to their wells; may the brutes die far afield!"

The man was in a tumult of grief and passion, the tears, I knew by his
voice, welling to his eyes. And indeed I was not happy myself, had not
been happy indeed, by this black home, even if the girl I loved was
waiting me at the turn of the road.

"Let us be going," I said at last.

"She might be here; she might be in the little plantati