In the
ungrazed pastures swaths of dead stuff caught their feet, and the
ground beneath glistened with sweat. At the bottom of the valley
a little brook had undermined its footbridge, and frothed in the
wreckage. But there stood great woods on the slopes beyond--old,
tall, and brilliant, like unfaded tapestries against the walls of
a ruined house.
"All this within a hundred miles of London," he said. "Looks as
if it had had nervous prostration, too." The, footpath turned the
shoulder of a slope, through a thicket of rank rhododendrons, and
crossed what had once been a carriage drive, which ended in the
shadow of two gigantic holm-oaks.
"A house!" said Sophie, in a whisper. "A Colonial house!"
Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark-bluish brick
Georgian pile, with a shell-shaped fan-light over its pillared
door. The hound had gone off on his own foolish quests. Except
for some stir it the branches and the flight of four startled
magpies; there was neither life nor sound about the square house,
but it looked out of its long windows most friendlily.
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