The year and a half had made little change about the place. Only I noticed some wheel-ruts on the road that were not old, and saw, as we came nearer, that the window over the porch had been mended. As we entered the avenue, Miss Kit reined up for me to approach. "It's a finer house than Knockowen," said she. "I never saw it so near before. Why does my father hate it so?" "'Deed I cannot say, but it's certain he does hate it." "Help me down, Barry, and fasten the horses. Where do we go in?" "Faith, that's the puzzle. When I came before I got in by yon window." She laughed as she looked up. "You'll have to go the same way again," said she, "and I'll wait here till you open the door for me." I was in for the venture now! When I looked for the ladder, though, it was not to be seen. But the thick creeper beside the door served the purpose, and by dint of clambering I reached the porch-top in safety. To my relief, I found that, though the window was mended, it was not bolted, and that I could lift it without breaking a new pane of glass. I confess, in spite of the bright daylight, it gave me a turn to find myself once more in that fatal room, and recall the terrors of the night when I saw it last. As quickly as possible I left it, and descended the stairs to the hall. Here a strange perplexity arose. For though I was certain where the door should be, there was never a sign of it inside--nothing but a row of iron-barred windows along the wall, like the corridor of a jail. When I came to look a little closer, I found that the doorway had been bricked up and plastered, so that by the ground-floor there was positively no entrance to the house. With some misgivings, I wandered on to the great kitchen where Tim and I had had such a fright. But it was empty now, and the sun, as it glanced through the guarded window, fell brightly on the white hearthstone. Nor, though all was still as death, could my ears catch a single sound, except the stamping of the horses without and the idle tapping of my lady's whip against the pilaster of the door. I traversed the corridor to the other end. It opened into a large room of the same size as the kitchen, evidently a dining-room, for a long table stood in the middle, and a solitary, moth-eaten stag's head, with antlers broken, hung over the chimney-piece. Other doors opened off the corridor, and beyond them, along the back of the house and overlooking the boggy lake, ran another corridor, out of which no door opened to the outer world. There was no sign of life anywhere, and the few pieces of furniture, rotten and withered with time, were more deathlike than if the house had been stark empty.