The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads.

Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end.
"Was it here ?" he asked in a low voice.
"No, no, the Yew Alley is on the other side." The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.
"It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this," said he.

"It's enough to scare any man.
I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door." The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us.

In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected.

The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat-of-arms broke through the dark veil.
From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes.