Page 387 (1/2)

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a

lonesome wild No wonder that letters addressed to people here had

never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a

church aisle The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate

the Hall had fallen--by conflagration: but how kindled? What story

belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and

ork had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as

property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here

to answer it--not even du round the shattered walls and through the devastated

interior, I gathered evidence that the calaht, had drifted through that void

arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow case had cherished vegetation:

grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen

rafters And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this

wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily

wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, "Is

he with Da the shelter of his narrow marble

house?"