were twittering in the ivy outside; oxen were lowing to each other
across the park. Morning, with all her music, was abroad.

I started up in bed and rubbed my eyes. Within the house everything was
as mute as the grave. That horrible tramping overhead had ceased--had
ceased, doubtless, with the return of daylight, which would otherwise
have shifted it from the region of the weird to that of the
commonplace. I smiled to myself as I thought of my terrors of the past
night, and felt brave enough just then to have faced a thousand ghosts.
In another minute I was out of bed, and had drawn up my blind, and flung
open my window, and was drinking in the sweet peaceful scene that
stretched away before me in long level lines to the edge of a far-off
horizon.

My window was high up and looked out at the front of the hall.
Immediately below me was a semicircular lawn, shut in from the park by
an invisible fence, close shaven, and clumped with baskets of flowers
glowing just now with all the brilliance of late autumn. The main
entrance--a flight of shallow steps, and an Ionic portico, as I
afterwards found--was at one end of the building, and was reached by a
long straight carriage drive, the route of which could be traced across
the park by the thicker growth of trees with which it was fringed. This
park stretched to right and left for a mile either way. In front, it was
bounded, a short half-mile away, by the high road, beyond which were
level wide-stretching meadows, through which the river Adair washed slow
and clear.

But chief of all this morning I wanted to be down among the flowers. I
made haste to wash and dress, taking an occasional peep through the
window as I did so, and trying to entice the birds from their