“Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they sleep well,’ ” I muttered. “Where are you going now, Mrs. Fairfax?” for she was moving away.
“On to the leads; will you come and see the view from thence?”
I followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by a ladder and through a trapdoor to the roof of the hall. I was now on a level with the crow colony, and could see into their nests.
Leaning over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map:
- the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion;
- the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber;
- the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage;
- the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s sun;
- the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.
No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was pleasing.
When I turned from it and repassed the trapdoor, I could scarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a vault compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and to that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the hall was the centre, and over which I had been gazing with delight.
Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trapdoor; I, by drift of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey: narrow, low, and dim, with only one little