street having originally been an incursion into a large private estate,
of which the wood alone remained. On the other side a tangled nutwood
coppice separated the judge's residence from its nearest neighbours, so
the house was completely isolated. It stood well back in about four acres
of ground, and only a glimpse of it could be seen from the street front
because of a small plantation of ornamental trees, which grew in front of
the house and hid it almost completely from view. When the carriage drive
which wound through the plantation had been passed the house burst
abruptly into view--a big, rambling building of uncompromising ugliness.
Its architecture was remarkable. The impression which it conveyed was
that the original builder had been prevented by lack of money from
carrying out his original intention of erecting a fine symmetrical house.
The first story was well enough--an imposing, massive, colonnaded front
in the Greek style, with marble pillars supporting the entrance. But the
two stories surmounting this failed lamentably to carry on the
pretentious design. Viewed from the front, they looked as though the
builder, after erecting the first story, had found himself in pecuniary
straits, but, determined to finish his house somehow, had built two
smaller stories on the solid edifice of the first. For the two second
stories were not flush with the front of the house, but reared themselves
from several feet behind, so that the occupants of the bedrooms on the
first story could have used the intervening space as a balcony. Viewed
from the rear, the architectural imperfections of the upper part of the
house were in even stronger contrast with the ornamental first story.
Apparently the impecunious builder, by the time he had reached the rear,
had completely run out of funds, for on the third floor he had failed
altogether to build in one small room, and had left the unfinished
brickwork unplastered.

The large open space between the house and the fir plantation had once