Stables, carriage-houses, kennels, a laundry, a brewery,
and half a dozen structures the intention of which is
now somewhat uncertain--some flat-topped, some gabled,
others with turrets, or massive grouped chimneys, or overhanging
timbered upper stories--form round this unkempt, shadowed
green a sort of village, with a communal individuality of its own.

A glance shows its feudal relation to, and dependence
upon, the great house behind which it nestles;
some of the back-kitchens and offices of this
great house, indeed, straggle out till they meet and
merge themselves into this quadrangle. None the less,
it presents to the enquiring gaze a specific character,
of as old a growth, one might think, as the oak itself.
Here servants have lived, it may be, since man first learned
the trick of setting his foot on his brother's neck.
Plainly enough, the monks' servants lived and worked here;
half the buildings on the side nearest the house belong to
their time, and one of them still bears a partially-defaced
coat of arms that must have belonged to an Abbot.
And when lay lord succeeded cleric, only the garb and
vocabulary of servitude were altered in this square.
Its population crossed themselves less, and worked much harder,
but they remained in a world of their own, adjacent aud
subject to the world of their masters, yet separated
from it by oh! such countless and unthinkable distances.

Thorpe sauntered along the side of the stables.
He counted three men and a boy who visibly belonged
to this department. The dog-cart of the previous evening