The park that surrounded the house was all run wild; the trees grown out of shape; the fish-ponds stagnant; the urns and statues fallen from their pedestals and buried among the rank grass.  The hares and pheasants were so little molested, except by poachers, that they bred in great abundance, and sported about the rough lawns and weedy avenues.  To guard the premises and frighten off robbers, of whom he was somewhat apprehensive, and visitors, whom he held in almost equal awe, my uncle kept two or three blood-hounds, who were always prowling round the house, and were the dread of the neighboring peasantry.  They were gaunt and half-starved, seemed ready to devour one from mere hunger, and were an effectual check on any stranger’s approach to this wizard castle.

Such was my uncle’s house, which I used to visit now and then during The holydays.  I was, as I have before said, the old man’s favorite; that is to say, he did not hate me so much as he did the rest of the world.  I had been apprised of his character, and cautioned to cultivate his good-will; but I was too young and careless to be a courtier; and indeed have never been sufficiently studious of my interests to let them govern my feelings.  However, we seemed to jog on very well together; and as my visits cost him almost nothing, they did not seem to be very unwelcome.  I brought with me my gun and fishing-rod, and half supplied the table from the park and the fishponds.

Our meals were solitary and unsocial.  My uncle rarely spoke; he pointed for whatever he wanted, and the servant perfectly understood him.  Indeed, his man John, or Iron John, as he was called in the neighborhood, was a counterpart of his master.  He was a tall, bony old fellow, with a dry wig that seemed made of cow’s tail, and a face as tough as though it had been made of bull’s hide.  He was generally clad in a long, patched livery coat, taken out of the wardrobe of the house; and which bagged loosely about him, having evidently belonged to some corpulent predecessor, in the more plenteous days of the mansion.  From long habits of taciturnity, the hinges of his jaws seemed to have grown absolutely rusty, and it cost him as much effort to set them ajar, and to let out a tolerable sentence, as it would have done to set open the iron gates of a park, and let out the family carriage that was dropping to pieces in the coach-house.

I cannot say, however, but that I was for some time amused with my uncle’s peculiarities.  Even the very desolateness of the establishment had something in it that hit my fancy.  When the weather was fine I used to amuse myself, in a solitary way, by rambling about the park, and coursing like a colt across its lawns.  The hares and pheasants seemed to stare with surprise, to see a human being walking these forbidden grounds by day-light.  Sometimes I amused myself by jerking stones, or shooting at birds with a bow and arrows; for to have used a gun would have been treason.  Now and then my path