But his anxiety to learn the fate of the proprietors, and his fears as to what that fate might be, increased with every step.

When he entered upon the terrace, new scenes of desolation were visible.

The balustrade was broken down, the walls destroyed, the borders overgrown with weeds, and the fruit-trees cut down or grubbed up.

In one compartment of this old-fashioned garden were two immense horse-chestnut trees, of whose size the Baron was particularly vain: too lazy, perhaps, to cut them down, the spoilers, with malevolent ingenuity, had mined them, and placed a quantity of gunpowder in the cavity.

One had been shivered to pieces by the explosion, and the fragments lay scattered around, encumbering the ground it had so long shadowed.