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.