having (as he said) happened to see a certain guarded advertisement in
the _Times_ headed, "To Artists and Others," that lodgings in the midst
of forest scenery could be procured for what seemed next to nothing, he
had come down from London in the autumn on the chance, and found them
suitable.

To poet or painter's eye, indeed, the lodge was charming; it was small,
of course, but very picturesquely built, and afforded the new tenant a
bow-windowed sitting-room, with an outlook such as few dwellings in
England, and probably none elsewhere, could offer. In the fore-ground
was an open lawn, on which scores of fine-plumaged pheasants strutted
briskly, and myriads of rabbits came forth at eve to play and
nibble--bordered by crops of fern, above which moved statelily the
antlered deer. A sentry oak or two of mighty girth guarded this open
space; but on both sides vast glades shut in the prospect with a wall of
checkered light and shadow that deepened into sylvan gloom. But right in
front the expanding view seemed without limit, and exhibited all
varieties of forest scenery; coppices with "Autumn's fiery finger" on
their tender leaves; still, shining pools, where water-fowl bred and
dwelt; broad pathways, across which the fallow deer could bound at
leisure; or one would leap in haste, and half a hundred follow in
groundless panic. The wealth of animal life in that green solitude,
where the voice of man was hardly ever heard, was prodigious; the rarest
birds were common there; even those who had their habitations by the sea
were sometimes lured to this as silent spot, and skimmed above its
undulating dells as o'er the billow. The eagle and the osprey had been
caught there; and, indeed, a specimen of each was caged in a sort of
aviary, which Grange had had constructed at the back of the lodge; while
Yorke's sitting-room was literally stuffed full of these strange
feathered visitants, which had fallen victims to the keeper's gun. The