"As I walked through the dark vaulting, I suddenly saw on the other side of the archway, framed as it were in a black frame, the 'Manor' before my eyes. "It lay hardly a thousand paces away from me. The white walls of the manor house gleamed across waving bushes, flooded by the purple rays of the setting sun. The zinc-covered roof glistened as if a cascade of foaming water were gliding down over it. From the windows flames seemed to be bursting, and a storm-cloud hung like a canopy of black curdling smoke over the coping. "I pressed my hands to my heart; its beating almost took my breath, so deeply did the sight affect me. For a moment I had a feeling as if I must turn back there and then, and hasten away precipitately from this place, never stopping or staying till the distance gave me shelter. All my anxiety for Martha was swallowed up in this mysterious fear, which almost strangled me. I rebuked myself for being foolish and cowardly, and, gathering together all my strength, I proceeded along the country road in which half-dried-up puddles gleamed like mirrors in the cart-ruts. Through the crests of the poplars above me there passed a hoarse rustling, which accompanied me till I reached the courtyard gate. Just as I entered it, the last sunbeam disappeared behind the walls of the manor and the darkness of the mighty lime trees, which spread from the park across the path, so suddenly enveloped me that I thought night had come on. "To the right and left tumble-down brickwork, overgrown with half-withered celandine, jutted out above ragged thorn-bushes--the remains of the old castle, upon the ruins of which the manor house had been erected. An atmosphere of death and decay seemed to lie over it all. "I spied fearfully across the vast courtyard, which the dusk of evening was beginning to cloak in blue mists. At every sound I started; I felt as if Robert's mighty voice must shout a welcome to me. The courtyard was empty, the silence of the vesper hour rested upon it. Only from one of the stable-doors there came the peculiar hissing sound which the sharpening of a scythe produces. A scent of new-mown hay filled the air with its peculiarly sweet, pungent aroma.