Feeling the ground with his stick, he pursued his way more cautiously through the refuse and litter, amongst which he came across occasionally a disused waggon or the rotten barrel of a brandy cask held together by iron hoops. He went on, up the hill to the Castle. The path was overgrown with brambles as tall as himself, and again he came on traps, their wide open maws greedily eager to seize him by the leg. The whole place seemed strewn with them--the only signs of civilisation he had as yet encountered. The Castle lay before him, with yawning window-frames and sundered walls, a complete ruin. Piles of fallen tiles and plaster, between which rank grass and weeds had sprung up, formed a mound round its foundations. The vestibule, with its drooping rafters, had become a perfect bower of creepers and evergreens, whose luxuriant growth seemed almost impenetrable. A white tablet hung among the leaves, on which, in his father's handwriting, were the words, "_Caution to trespassers_." He shuddered at this, the first trace he had seen for six years of the man to whom he owed his existence, and whom he had now come to bury. In a few moments he would be standing probably beside his corpse. But how was he to find it? What resting-place could his father have found here while yet alive? No door or unbroken window, no signs of a human habitation, were visible amidst all this fearful wreckage. He turned, and walked slowly the length of the Castle façade, past the towers which flanked the gabled roof; here over the blackened stonework the ivy had begun to grow afresh, enshrouding it in a peaceful melancholy. From this point his eye caught a vista of the park, with its giant timber and wealth of undergrowth. And then he saw a few yards off, on the grass-plot where once had stood the statue of the goddess Diana, of which nothing now was left but the shattered fragments and pedestal, a woman.... A slender, strongly-built woman, with long plaits of dark curling hair hanging down her back. Her primitive costume consisted of a red petticoat and a chemise. She was digging energetically with a heavy spade in the dark rich soil, and was apparently too engrossed to notice his approach. She set her naked foot at regular intervals, as if beating time on the hard edge of the spade, and with the slightest possible pressure drove it deep into the earth. As she dug she sang a song on two notes, a high and a low, which welled out of her full breast like the sound of a sweet-toned bell. The chemise, a coarse and roughly made garment, had slipped off her shoulders, laying bare the strong, magnificently moulded neck. When he addressed her, she drew herself erect with a sudden movement of surprise and alarm, and stood before him half naked.