Nothing over-head
gave traces of the recent storm; but on looking from my window, I
beheld sad ravage among the shrubs and flowers; the garden-walks had
formed the channels for little torrents; trees were lopped of their
branches; and a small silver stream that wound through the park, and
ran at the bottom of the lawn, had swelled into a turbid yellow sheet
of water.
In an establishment like this, where the mansion is vast, ancient, and
somewhat afflicted with the infirmities of age, and where there are
numerous and extensive dependencies, a storm is an event of a very
grave nature, and brings in its train a multiplicity of cares and
disasters.
While the Squire was taking his breakfast in the great hall, he was
continually interrupted by some bearer of ill-tidings from some part
or other of his domains; he appeared to me like the commander of a
besieged city, after some grand assault, receiving at his headquarters
reports, of damages sustained in the various quarters of the place. At
one time the housekeeper brought him intelligence of a chimney blown
down, and a desperate leak sprung in the roof over the picture
gallery, which threatened to obliterate a whole generation of his
ancestors.
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