s buildings
once inhabited, so wrapped round and hidden away by trees, have now a
strange look in memory as if they had a story to tell, as if something
intelligent had looked from the vacant windows as I stood staring at
them and had said, We have waited these many years for you to come and
listen to our story and you are come at last.

Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting and
message, but I failed to understand it, and after standing there awhile,
oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned aside, and creeping and
pushing through a mass and tangle of vegetation went on my way towards
the coast.

Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human tragedy, came to
me only because of another singular experience I had that day when the
afternoon sun had grown oppressively hot--another mystery of a desolate
but not in this case uninhabited house. The two places somehow became
associated together in my mind.

The place was a little farm-house standing some distance from the road,
in a lonely spot out of sight of any other habitation, and I thought I
would call and ask for a glass of milk, thinking that if things had
a promising look on my arrival my modest glass of milk would perhaps
expand to a sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and
pleasant one.

The house I found on coming nearer was small and mean-looking and very
old; the farm buildings in a dilapidated condition, the thatch rotten
and riddled with holes in which many starlings and sparrows had their
nests. Gates and fences were broken down, and the ground was everywhere
overgrown with weeds and encumbered with old broken and rusty
implements, and littered with rubbish. No person could I see about the
place, but knew it was inhabited as there were some fowls walking about,
and some calves shut in a pen in one of the numerous buildings were
dolefully calling--calling to be fed. Seeing a door half open at one end
of the house I went to it and rapped on the warped paintless wood with
my stick, and after about a minute a young woman came from an inner room
and asked me what I wanted. She was not disturbed or surprised at my
sudden appearance there: her face was impassive, and her eyes when they
met mine appeared to look not at me but at something distant, and her
words were spoken mechanically.

I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and would be glad of a glass
of milk.

Without a word she turned and left me s