, as they entered
through the gates, there was a large barn, in which two men were
coopering wine vats. From thence a path led slanting to the house,
of which the door was shut, and all the front windows blocked with
shutters. The house was very long, and only of one story for a
portion of its length. Over that end at which the door was placed
there were upper rooms, and there must have been space enough for a
large family with many domestics. There was nothing round or near
the residence which could be called a garden, so that its look of
desolation was extreme. There were various large barns and outhouses,
as though it had been intended by the builder that corn and hay and
cattle should be kept there; but it seemed now that there was nothing
there except the empty vats at which the two men were coopering. Had
the Englishmen gone farther into the granary, they would have seen
that there were wine-presses stored away in the dark corners.

They stopped and looked at the men, and the men halted for a moment
from their work and looked at them; but the men spoke never a word.
Mr. Glascock then asked after Mr. Trevelyan, and one of the coopers
pointed to the house. Then they crossed over to the door, and Mr.
Glascock finding there neither knocker nor bell, first tapped with
his knuckles, and then struck with his stick. But no one came. There
was not a sound in the house, and no shutter was removed. "I don't
believe that there is a soul here," said Sir Marmaduke.

"We'll not give it up till we've seen it all at any rate," said Mr.
Glascock. And so they went round to the other front.

On this side of the house the tilled ground, either ploughed or dug
with the spade, came up to the very windows. There was hardly even
a particle of grass to be seen. A short way down the hill there
were rows of olive trees, standing in prim order and at regular
distances, from which hung the vines that made the coopering of
the vats necessary. Olives and vines have pretty names, and call
up associations of landscape beauty. But here they were in no way
beautiful. The ground beneath them was turned up, and brown, and
arid, so that there was not a blade of grass to be seen. On some
furrows the maize or Indian corn was sprouting, and there were
patches of growth of other kinds,--each patch closely marked by its
own straight lines; and there were narrow paths, so constructed as to
take as little room as possible. But all that had been done had be