ted it up;
gray molehills and rank tufts of grass rose on all sides.

The landlord stretched out his hand. "There is the castle. This castle
is famous throughout the whole country," he added, reverentially; "no
nobleman in the district has a stone house like that. All the gentry
here live in wood and mud buildings. Herr von Tarow, the richest of
them, has but a poor dwelling."

About three hundred yards from the last out-building rose a great brick
edifice, with a black slate roof and a thick round tower. Its gloomy
walls on this treeless pasture-land, without one trace of life around,
rose beneath the cloudy sky like a phantom fortress which some evil
spirit had evoked from the abyss--a station from which to blight all the
surrounding landscape.

The strangers approached it. The castle had fallen into ruins before the
builders had finished their task. The tower had stood there for ages. It
was built of unhewn stone, and had small windows and loop-holes. The
former lords of the land had looked down from its summit on the tops of
the trees, which then stretched far into the plain. They had then ruled
with a rod of iron the serfs who cultivated their land, and toiled and
died for them. Many an arrow had sped through those loop-holes at the
enemy storming below, and many a Tartar horse had been overthrown before
those massive walls. Years ago, a despot of the district had, in
expiation of former sins, begun to add to the gray tower the walls of a
holy monastery; but the monastery never got finished, and the useless
walls had already stood there long, when the late count took it into his
head to convert them into a lordly dwelling for his race, and to raise a
house unparalleled for magnificence in the whole country.

The front of the house was added on to both sides of the tower, which
projected in the middle. The intention had been to have a high
terrace-road up to the castle, and the principal entrance had been made
in the tower, and arched over; but the terrace never having been formed,
the stone threshold of the main door was quite inaccessible without the
help of ladders, and the wide opening was left. The window-spaces of
the lower floor were merely closed up with boards, while on the second
story were some window-frames of beautifully carved wood, in which large
panes had once been placed, but they had got broken. In other windows
were temporary frames of rough deal, with small panes of muddy glass let
into them.