No priest ordains² it, yet they’re forced to sit

  Amid deep ashes of their vanished years.

Imagine a rambling³, patchy house, the best part built of gray stone, and red-tiled, a round tower jutting⁴ at one of the corners, the mellow⁵ darkness of its conical roof surmounted⁶ by a weather-cock making an agreeable object either amidst the gleams and greenth of summer or the low-hanging clouds and snowy branches of winter: the ground shady with spreading trees: a great tree flourishing on one side, backward some Scotch⁷ firs on a broken bank where the roots hung naked, and beyond, a rookery: on the other side a pool overhung with bushes, where the water-fowl fluttered and screamed: all around, a vast meadow which might be called a park, bordered by an old plantation⁸ and guarded by stone lodges⁹ which looked like little prisons. Outside the gate the country, once entirely¹⁰ rural and lovely, now black with coal mines, was chiefly peopled by men and brethren with candles stuck in their hats, and with a diabolic complexion¹¹ which laid them peculiarly open to suspicion in the eyes of the children at Gadsmere—Mrs. Glasher’s four beautiful children, who had dwelt there for about three years. Now, in November, when the flower-beds were empty, the trees leafless, and the pool blackly shivering, one might have said that the place was sombrely in keeping with the black roads and black

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