Not a village, not a hut was anywhere to be seen. From the
roadside sedges, flocks of noisy wild-geese, from time to time, flew
across the sky which the setting sun coloured yellow. At last a great
clattering and rattling gave those sitting in the carriage to understand
that they were passing into a courtyard and the carriage door was
opened. Henrietta got out. The young wife looked around with the same
sort of curiosity which a robber condemned to a long term of
imprisonment and conveyed to a distant jail might feel on first
surveying his new environment.
[Footnote 4: Sand hills.]
In the midst of a spacious courtyard, surrounded by stone walls, stood
an old-fashioned mansion with a verandah in front of it, resting on
quadrangular columns which one ascended by a staircase whose brick
parapet served as a lounge both for the gentlemen guests and their
heydukes whenever they wanted to take their ease,--though, of course,
the gentlemen occupied one end of it and the heydukes the other. A
couple of favourite dogs were also accommodated with a place there. But
when the carriages stopped in front of the verandah, every one instantly
quitted this favourite sun-lit resting place and rushed down to meet
them--host, guests, heydukes, and dogs.
The first to reach the carriage door was a peculiar looking man, a more
repulsively mutilated creature it was impossible to imagine.
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