When you
see a rich wilderness of wood in decent England, it is like enough
that you see it with some soft regrets. The puzzled old woman at
the lodge can give small account of "the family." She thinks it is
"Italy" that has made the whole circle of her world so gloomy and
sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper,
but you make your way on by the stables; you remember that gable
with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks and owls,
now slowly falling to pieces; you remember that stable, and that--
but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar, the
paint of things painted is blistered and cracked, grass grows in
the yard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait
with the dogs and the guns--no keeper now; you hurry away, and gain
the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome
hand--it is fastened with a padlock (the only new looking thing),
and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury
yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling
briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether
you will creep beneath the long boughs and make them your archway,
or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down
under foot.
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