The apple-trees still remained to show where the garden had been, the oldest of them even now retaining the crippled slant to north-east given them by the great November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over the Chesil Bank.

They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the heaviness of their produce.

Apples bobbed against his head, and in the grass beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked.

There was nobody to gather them now.
It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after another had taken up a position in the piece of sky which now confronted him where his walls and chimneys had formerly raised their outlines.

The house had jutted awkwardly into the road, and the opening caused by its absence was very distinct.
In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which here occurred, and of which the house had been the cause.