Beyond the summer-house there is a little esplanade of green turf, faced with a low wall toward the ditch, allowing the eye to run down a long, narrow avenue of gigantic elm-trees, meeting at the top in the perfect semblance of a Gothic aisle, and bordered on each hand by hedges of yew, six feet at least in height, clipped into the form and almost into the solidity of a wall. At the far end of this avenue, which must be nearly two-thirds of a mile in length, one can discern a glimpse of a formal garden, and beyond that, of some portion of what seems to be a large building of red brick. At the extremity of the esplanade and little wall, there grows an enormous oak, not very tall, but with an immense girth of trunk, and such a spread of branches that it completely overshadows the summer-house, and overhangs the whole surface of the small pool in front of it. Thenceforth, the tall and tangled hedge runs on, as usual denying all access of the eye, and the deep, clear ditch all access of the foot, to the demesnes within; until at the distance of perhaps a mile and a quarter, a little bridge crosses the latter, and a green gate, with a pretty rustic lodge beside it, gives entrance to a smooth lawn, with a gravel-road running across it, and losing itself on the farther side, in a thick belt of woodland. It is, however, with the summer-house that I have to do principally, for it is to it that the terror of blood has clung through the lapse of years, as the scent of the Turkish Atar is said to cling, indestructible, to the last fragment of the vessel which had once contained it. When first I saw that small lonely pavilion, I had heard nothing of the strange tradition which belonged to it, yet as I looked on the plastered walls, all covered with spots of damp and mildew, on the roof overrun with ivy, in masses so wildly luxuriant as almost to conceal the shape, on the windows, one in each side of the octagon, closed by stout jalousies, which had been once green with paint, but were now green with damp and vegetable mould, a strange feeling, half of curiosity and half of terror, came over me, mixed with that singular fascination of which I have spoken, which seemed to deny me any rest until I should have searched out the mystery--for I felt sure that mystery there was--connected with that summer-house, so desolate and so fast lapsing into ruin, while the hedges and gardens within appeared well cared for, and in trim cultivation. I well remember the first time I beheld that lonely and deserted building. It was near sunset, on as lovely a summer evening as ever shed its soft light on the earth; the air was breathless; the sky cloudless; thousands of swallows were upon the wing, some skimming the limpid surface of those old ditches, others gliding on balanced pinions so far aloft in the darkening firmament that the eye could barely discern them.