There was
something fascinating about that unexpected gate, like the opening
of a fairy tale.
Horne Fisher had in him something of the aristocrat, which is very
near to the anarchist. It was characteristic of him that he turned
into this dark and irregular entry as casually as into his own front
door, merely thinking that it would be a short cut to the house. He
made his way through the dim wood for some distance and with some
difficulty, until there began to shine through the trees a level
light, in lines of silver, which he did not at first understand. The
next moment he had come out into the daylight at the top of a steep
bank, at the bottom of which a path ran round the rim of a large
ornamental lake. The sheet of water which he had seen shimmering
through the trees was of considerable extent, but was walled in on
every side with woods which were not only dark, but decidedly
dismal. At one end of the path was a classical statue of some
nameless nymph, and at the other end it was flanked by two classical
urns; but the marble was weather-stained and streaked with green and
gray. A hundred other signs, smaller but more significant, told him
that he had come on some outlying corner of the grounds neglected
and seldom visited. In the middle of the lake was what appeared to
be an island, and on the island what appeared to be meant for a
classical temple, not open like a temple of the winds, but with a
blank wall between its Doric pillars.
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