Another fifteen minutes brought them to an unpretending iron gateway, which gave entrance to an avenue of fine old trees. The gate stood open, and though a woman ran out from the lodge when the trap passed, she made no demur.
The avenue was nearly half a mile in length, and ended in a sharp curve, which brought them quite suddenly before the house—a plain, square, substantial family dwelling, with a pillared doorway and long wide windows, about which crept ivy of a century's growth. It was all shut up, and the gravel sweep before the door was overgrown with moss and weeds, the grass on the lawns, which stretched away through the shrubberies, long and rank; yet there was a homely look about it too, as if a slight touch could convert it into a happy home.
'This is Bourhill, my girl; and whatever ambitions your father may have had in later years, it was once his one desire to buy it back to the Grahams. Do you like the place?'
'Yes, uncle; but it is very desolate—it makes me sad.'
'It will not be long so,' he said; and, drawing himself together with a quick shiver, he bade the driver turn the horses' heads. But before the house vanished quite from view he cast his gaze back upon it, and in his eye there was a strange, even a yearning glance. 'It will not be long so,' he repeated under his breath,—'not long; and it will be a great atonement.'
CHAPTER XI.
DARKENING DAYS.
