The trees had been stunted by smoke, but they lived yet. Much ivy, strong and tenacious from advanced age, clung about it. The grounds were thoroughly well kept. The parterres were blazing with the passionate, glowing colours of late summer flowers; the windows were glazed with sheets of plate-glass. Here and there a bow had been thrown out. Behind were extensive stables and outhouses. It was, though dingy, and miscellaneous in architecture, a fine, imposing old mansion; it instantly caught the stranger’s eye, and was known from infancy to every inhabitant of Thanshope as well as the old church on the hill behind the town-hall, or as the great co-operative stores on another hill at the other side of the town. To-night Myles looked more earnestly than usual at this old house. It was called ‘The Oakenrod,’ and was the property of Sebastian Mallory, tenanted during his absence by that stately dame, his mother. ‘There it is!’ said Myles within himself. ‘Cumbering the ground--kept like a palace for a fellow who doesn’t care two straws for it!’ Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned somewhat abruptly to the left, making for one of the side doors of the town-hall. He went in, and ran up a great many flights of stone steps, past corridors and branching passages, till he could go no higher, for the excellent reason that he was at the top of the building. Pushing open the glass door, which swung to behind him, Myles found himself in the holy of holies--the library. A door to the right led into the reading-room, and thither he directed his steps. It was a large, lofty, handsome room, with many tables and chairs, and plenty of pens, ink, newspapers, and periodicals scattered about. When Myles entered, the room was almost empty. One or two men were reading newspapers, and at one table in a window sat a girl, who had a great book open before her, but whose eyes were at the moment intently fixed upon the old house, the Oakenrod, which lay directly beneath. Myles, searching about, found a number of the _Westminster Review_, and took it to his accustomed place, at the table next to that where the girl sat. He noticed no one to right or to left of him--not even her who was almost the only lady visitor who ever entered the reading-room. She was already a familiar figure to his eyes. For some months past he had seen her nearly every evening, sitting at the same table, even at the same side of that table, with a book--generally some large and weighty volume--open before her, and a small thick note-book, in which she wrote extracts or abstracts of what she read.