CHAPTER XIX.
THE FACTOR.
The old avenue of beeches, leading immediately nowhither any more, but closed at one end by a built-up gate, and at the other by a high wall, between which two points it stretched quite a mile, was a favourite resort of Donal's, partly for its beauty, partly for its solitude.

The arms of the great trees crossing made of it a long aisle--its roof a broken vault of leaves, upheld by irregular pointed arches--which affected one's imagination like an ever shifting dream of architectural suggestion.

Having ceased to be a way, it was now all but entirely deserted, and there was eeriness in the vanishing vista that showed nothing beyond.

When the wind of the twilight sighed in gusts through its moanful crowd of fluttered leaves; or when the wind of the winter was tormenting the ancient haggard boughs, and the trees looked as if they were weary of the world, and longing after the garden of God; yet more when the snow lay heavy upon their branches, sorely trying their aged strength to support its oppression, and giving the onlooker a vague sense of what the world would be if God were gone from it--then the old avenue was a place from which one with more imagination than courage would be ready to haste away, and seek instead the abodes of men.

But Donal, though he dearly loved his neighbour, and that in the fullest concrete sense, was capable of loving the loneliest spots, for in such he was never alone.
It was altogether a neglected place.