rs; and so, sir, be kind enough to let
me shake hands with you now, and then let things be as they were before.
Only look at the horses, Mr. Anton. My faith! the creatures devour
thistles."

Again the horses were harnessed, again they threw out their short legs
in the sand, and again the carriage rolled through the barren
district--first through an empty plain, next through a wretched
fir-wood, then past a row of low sand-hills, then over a tumble-down
bridge crossing a small stream.

"This is the property," said the driver, turning round, and pointing
with his whip to a row of dirty thatched roofs that had just come into
sight.

Anton stood up to look for the group of trees in which the Hall might be
supposed to stand. Nothing of the sort to be seen. The village was
deficient in all that adorns the home of the poorest German peasant--no
orchard, no hedged-in gardens, no lime-trees in the market-place.

"This is wretched," said he, sitting down again; "much worse than they
told us in Rosmin."

"The village looks as if under a curse," cried Karl; "no teams working
in the fields--not a cow or a sheep to be seen."

The farm-servant flogged his horses into an irregular gallop, and so
they passed through the rows of mud huts which constituted the village,
and arrived at the public house. Karl sprang from the carriage, opened
the tavern door, and called for the landlord. A Jew slowly rose from his
seat by the stove and came to the threshold. "Is the gendarme from
Rosmin come?" He is gone into the village. "Which is the way to the
farm-yard?"

The landlord, an elderly man with an intelligent countenance, described
the way in German and Polish, and remained standing at the
door--bewildered, Karl declared, by the sight of two human beings. The
carriage turned into a cross-road, planted on both sides with thick
bushes, the remains of a fallen avenue. Over holes, stones, and puddles,
it rattled on to a group of mud huts, which still had a remnant of
whitewash upon them. "The barns and stables are empty," cried Karl, "for
I see gaps in the roofs large enough to drive our carriage through."

Anton said no more; he was prepared for every thing. They drove through
a break between the stables into the farm-yard, a large irregular space,
surrounded on three sides by tumble-down buildings, and open to the
fields on the fourth. A heap of _debris_ lay there--lime and rotten
timber, the remains of a ruined barn. The yard was empty