But he waked in a moment to the knowledge that he was
sitting upon his horse in the empty road and in the quiet of an August
morning. There were larks singing in the pale blue above his head; a
landrail sent up its harsh cry from the meadow on the left; the crow of
a cock rose clear from the valley. He looked about him, and rode briskly
on down the incline in front of him and up the ascent beyond. He rode
again with his company of ghosts--phantoms of people with whom upon this
road he had walked and ridden and laughed, ghosts of old thoughts and
recollected words. He came to a thick grove of trees, a broken fence, a
gateway with no gate. Inattentive to these evidences of desertion, he
turned in at the gate and rode along a weedy and neglected drive. At the
end of it he came to an open space before a ruined house. The aspect of
the tumbling walls and unroofed rooms roused him at last completely from
his absorption. He dismounted, and, tying his horse to the branch of a
tree, ran quickly into the house and called aloud. No voice answered
him. He ran from deserted room to deserted room. He descended into the
garden, but no one came to meet him; and he understood now from the
uncut grass upon the lawn, the tangled disorder of the flowerbeds, that
no one would come.
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