nd weather by
a group of Scotch firs, themselves half blighted with storms, and looking
as stern and gloomy as the Hall itself. Behind it lay a few desolate
fields, and then the brown heath-clad summit of the hill; before it
(enclosed by stone walls, and entered by an iron gate, with large balls
of grey granite--similar to those which decorated the roof and
gables--surmounting the gate-posts) was a garden,--once stocked with such
hard plants and flowers as could best brook the soil and climate, and
such trees and shrubs as could best endure the gardener's torturing
shears, and most readily assume the shapes he chose to give them,--now,
having been left so many years untilled and untrimmed, abandoned to the
weeds and the grass, to the frost and the wind, the rain and the drought,
it presented a very singular appearance indeed. The close green walls of
privet, that had bordered the principal walk, were two-thirds withered
away, and the rest grown beyond all reasonable bounds; the old boxwood
swan, that sat beside the scraper, had lost its neck and half its body:
the castellated towers of laurel in the middle of the garden, the
gigantic warrior that stood on one side of the gateway, and the lion that
guarded the other, were sprouted into such fantastic shapes as resembled
nothing either in heaven or earth, or in the waters under the earth; but,
to my young imagination, they presented all of them a goblinish
appearance, that harmonised well with the ghostly legions and dark
traditions our old nurse had told us respecting the haunted hall and its
departed occupants.

[Picture: Moorland Scene, Haworth]

I had succeeded in killing a hawk and two crows when I came within sight
of the mansion; and then, relinquishing further depredations, I sauntered
on, to have a look at the old place, and see what changes had been
wrought in it by its new inhabitant. I did not like to go quite to the
front and stare in at the gate; but I paused beside the garden wall, and
looked, and saw no change--except in one wing, where the broken windows
and dilapidated roof had evidently been repaired, and where a thin wreath
of smoke was curling up from the stack of chimneys.

While I thus stood, leaning on my gun, and looking up at the dark gables,
sunk in an idle reverie, weaving a tissue of wayward fancies, in which
old associations and the fair young hermit, now within those walls, bore
a nearly equal part, I heard a slight