tted tree-trunks in the
forest.

"Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say," the Marquis d'Albon cried
once more, as they stood before a grim old gateway. Through the
grating they could see the house itself standing in the midst of some
considerable extent of park land; from the style of the architecture it
appeared to have been a monastery once upon a time.

"Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a site!"

This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate's amazement at the
romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house had been built on a spot
half-way up the hillside on the slope below the village of Nerville,
which crowned the summit. A huge circle of great oak-trees, hundreds of
years old, guarded the solitary place from intrusion. There appeared
to be about forty acres of the park. The main building of the monastery
faced the south, and stood in a space of green meadow, picturesquely
intersected by several tiny clear streams, and by larger sheets of water
so disposed as to have a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting
foliage grew here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; and
broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were broken and
the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to this sylvan Thebaid a
certain character of its own. The art of man and the picturesqueness of
nature had wrought together to produce a charming effect. Human passions
surely could not cross that boundary of tall oak-trees which shut out
the sounds of the outer world, and screened the fierce heat of the sun
from this forest sanctuary.

"What neglect!" said M. d'Albon to himself, after the first sense of
delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in the landscape, which
seemed blighted by a curse.

It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted ivy stems
clambered everywhere, hiding everything away beneath a luxuriant green
mantle. Moss and lichens, brown and gray, yellow and red, covered the
trees with fantastic patches of color, grew upon the benches in the
garden, overran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes
were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were dropping to
pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the folding shutters hung
by a single hinge. The crazy doors would have given way at the first
attempt to force an entrance.

Out in the orchard the neglected fruit-trees were running to wood, the
rambling branches bore no fruit save