were courting oblivion, steeping
themselves in solitude, tempting their very woods to encroach upon them,
and so swathe them as in a mantle of secrecy which might cover their
misfortunes, and win forgetfulness both for their faults and for their
decline.

The glen was about three hundred yards across, and the trees which
crowded it, and overflowed its steep side encroaching over the flat
ground beyond, were chiefly maples and sycamores. Every sunbeam that
shot in served to show its desolation. The place was encumbered with
fallen branches, tangled brushwood, dead ferns; and wherever the little
stream had spread itself there was a boggy hollow, rank with bulrushes,
and glorious with the starry marsh marigold. But here and there dead
trees stood upright, gaunt and white in their places, great swathes of
bark hanging loose from their limbs, while crowds of young saplings,
sickly for want of space and light, thrust up their heads towards the
sunshine, and were tied together and cumbered in their struggle by
climbing ropes of ivy, and long banners of the wild black vine.

The ring of woodland was not deep, the domain was soon traversed, and
then stepping out into a space covered with rank meadow grass, one might
see the house which should have been its heart.

It was a wide, old, red brick mansion, with many irregular windows, no
pane in which was more than two inches square. One end of it was deeply
embedded in an orchard of pear and apple trees, but its front was
exposed, and over the door might be seen the date of its building. The
roof was high and sloping, and in its centre rose a high stack of brick
chimneys, which had almost the effect of a tower, while under the eaves,
at regular intervals, were thrust out grotesque heads, with short spouts
protruding from their mouths. Some of these had fallen on the
paving-flags below, and no one had taken them up. No one ever looked out
of those front windows, or appeared to notice how fast the fruit-trees
by the house, and the forest-trees from the glen, were reaching out
their arms and sending forth their young saplings towards it, as if to
close it in and swallow it up.

So still it looked with its closed shutters, that what slight evidence
there was of its really being inhabited appeared only to make it yet
more strange and alone; for these were a gaunt, feeble, old dog, who
paced up and down the flags as if keeping guard, and a brass handle on
the oaken door, which was s