crept over the floors. Useless and
unsightly the walls stood there, threatening to crumble and fall, like
the race that had raised them up.

Anton passed with rapid step from room to room, vainly hoping to find
one in which he could even imagine the two ladies, who were looking
forward to this house as their asylum. He opened door after door, went
up and down creaking steps, disturbed the birds who had flown in through
the open archway, and still clung to their last summer's nest; but he
found nothing save uninhabitable rooms, with dirty plastered walls, or
without any plaster at all. Every where draughts, gaping doors, and
windows boarded up. Some oats had been shaken out in the large saloon;
and a few rooms looked as if they might have been temporarily made use
of, but a few old chairs and a rude table were all the furniture they
contained.

At length Anton ascended the decayed staircase in the tower, and found
himself on its summit. Thence he saw the whole pile of building below
him, and looked far into the plain. To his left the sun sank down behind
gray masses of cloud into the depths of the forest; to his right lay the
irregular square of the farm-yard, and beyond it the untidy village;
behind him ran the brook, with a strip of meadow-land on either side.
Wild pear-trees, the delight of the Polish farmer, rose here and there
in the fields, with their thick and branching crowns; and under each was
an oasis of grass and bushes, gayly colored by the fallen leaves. These
trees, the dwelling-places of countless birds, alone broke the
monotonous surface of the plain--these, and at the verge of the horizon,
on all sides, the dark forest mentioned above. The sky was gray, the
ground colorless, the trees and bushes that bordered the brook were
bare, and the forest, with its promontories and bays, looked like a wall
that separated this spot of earth from the rest of humanity, from
civilization, from every joy and charm of life.

Anton's heart sank. "Poor Lenore! poor family!" he groaned aloud;
"things look terrible, but they could be improved. With money and taste
every thing is possible. This house might, without prodigious expense,
be metamorphosed by the upholsterer into a gorgeous residence. It would
be easy to level the pasture-land around--to sow it with fine grass--to
intersperse it with a few gayly-colored flower-beds--and to plant out
the village. Nothing is wanting to change the whole face of the district
but