ith curiosity to reach the other side of the pool,
where, by every law of manorial topography, the mansion would be situate.
The fog concealed all objects beyond a distance of twenty yards or
thereabouts, but it was nearly full moon, and though the orb was hidden,
a pale diffused light enabled them to see objects in the foreground.
Reaching the other side of the lake the drive enlarged itself most
legitimately to a large oval, as for a sweep before a door, a pile of
rockwork standing in the midst.

But where should have been the front door of a mansion was simply a rough
rail fence, about four feet high. They drew near and looked over.

In the enclosure, and on the site of the imaginary house, was an
extraordinary group. It consisted of numerous horses in the last stage
of decrepitude, the animals being such mere skeletons that at first
Ethelberta hardly recognized them to be horses at all; they seemed rather
to be specimens of some attenuated heraldic animal, scarcely thick enough
through the body to throw a shadow: or enlarged castings of the fire-dog
of past times. These poor creatures were endeavouring to make a meal
from herbage so trodden and thin that scarcely a wholesome blade
remained; the little that there was consisted of the sourer sorts common
on such sandy soils, mingled with tufts of heather and sprouting ferns.

'Why have we come here, dear Berta?' said Picotee, shuddering.

'I hardly know,' said Ethelberta.

Adjoining this enclosure was another and smaller one, formed of high
boarding, within which appeared to be some sheds and outhouses.
Ethelberta looked through the crevices, and saw that in the midst of the
yard stood trunks of trees as if they were growing, with branches also
extending, but these were sawn off at the points where they began to be
flexible, no twigs or boughs remaining. Each torso was not unlike a huge
hat-stand, and suspended to the pegs and prongs were lumps of some
substance which at first she did not recognize; they proved to be a
chronological sequel to the previous scene. Horses' skulls, ribs,
quarters, legs, and other joints were hung thereon, the whole forming a
huge open-air larder emitting not too sweet a smell.

But what Stygian sound was this? There had arisen at the moment upon the
mute and sleepy air a varied howling from a hundred tongues. It had
burst from a spot close at hand--a low wooden building by a stream which
fed the lake--and reverberated for mile