From the rusty iron gates at the termination of the avenue up to the house itself stretched this jungle, and egress could only be obtained by means of the carriage-drive, which was in fairly good repair. Woods, and lawns, and flowerbeds, and paths were allowed to go to rack and ruin. For half a century Nature had done as she liked, with the result that Farbis Park became a wilderness. Only in tropical Africa could such savagery be paralleled. Nor was the house much better as regards care. Its long façade of red brick was reared on a substructure of terraces, whence wide flights of steps led downward to neglected lawn and gloomy forest. The trees had almost pushed their way to the balustrade of the terrace, and looked as though anxious to stifle the mansion in their close embrace. There were ranges of staring windows, turrets and gables and towers, sloping roofs and twisted chimney-stacks. Moss grew in the chinks of the bricks, many of the windows were broken, and here and there a crazy shutter swung noisily by one hinge. The coat of arms over the porch was mouldering and defaced; the steps leading to the iron-bound door were broken and timeworn. But that smoke issued from the chimneys in the daytime, and that lights gleamed from the windows by night, one would have deemed the great mansion uninhabited. Yet Miss Linisfarne dwelt therein. But her existence was one of more than conventual seclusion, and she herself decayed with the decaying woods and house. Long since had the Farbis folk ceased to wonder who she was, and why she had buried herself in so lonely a dwelling. Many of the villagers remembered that stormy December day, more than twenty years ago, when a travelling carriage crossed the moors, and brought a handsome young woman to that ill-omened house. From the time she arrived at Farbis, Miss Linisfarne had never left it again, but dwelt at the Court in solitary state, unfriended, almost unvisited. Parson Jarner and Meg were alone permitted to cross her threshold. No villager was invited to the kitchen of Farbis Court, nor did the servants mix with those who dwelt without the gates. It was surmised that there was some mystery connected with the persistent seclusion of Miss Linisfarne, but no one was clever enough to guess what the mystery might be. The general opinion was that the tenant of the Court had committed a crime, and had of her own free will condemned herself to a solitary life in expiation thereof. But this was a mere rumour, and unsupported by facts.