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In fact, I think it was once a real lake, which made its escape from its bed, as I have known some lakes to have done in America. Passing through and beyond the village, I saw, on a height above the road, a half-ruinous tower, with great cracks running down its walls, half-way from top to bottom.

The keep was re-built by Hotspur's son, after the family possessions had been restored to him by Henry V., and it is now the only remaining part of the castle which is almost perfect. One of the half-ruinous towers remaining is called the Lion Tower, from the sculptured lion on its walls; while another rejoices in the curious name of Cradyfargus.

American tourists, sure appreciators of all that is ancient and picturesque in England, invariably come to a halt, holding their breath in a sudden catch of wonder, as they pass through the half-ruinous gateway which admits to the Close of Wrychester. Nowhere else in England is there a fairer prospect of old-world peace.

They had gotten it unlimbered and were trying to get it on a target when a rocket from an aircar landed directly under the muzzle. Gun, caisson, crew, even the draft team fifty yards behind, had simply vanished. Or the little company, some of them women, trying to defend the top of a tall and half-ruinous building with rifles and pistols.

The poorhouse in the hollow had its barn and out-buildings attached at right angles, with a cart-path leading thereto from the street; but at the top of the slope, on the other side of the schoolward path, stood a large, half-ruinous old barn, used only for storing surplus hay.

This was really an outer court of the old cloisters; its high walls, half-ruinous, almost wholly covered with ivy, shut in an expanse of turf, liberally furnished with yew and cypress and studded with tombs and gravestones.

It was as large as a barrack; and as it had been built of a soft stone, liable to consume in the eager air of the seaside, it was damp and draughty within and half-ruinous without. It was impossible for two young men to lodge with comfort in such a dwelling.

He may behold three individuals in light shooting coats and cloth caps, standing upon the bank before their picturesque and half-ruinous house, their dogs at their side, and their gaze fixed upon the river that rolled beneath them.

A few feet in front of the steps a fountain, fed from the great ponds at the other side of the chateau, was making a constant tinkle and splashing in a wide marble basin, and the jet of water glimmered like a shower of diamonds in the broken moonlight. The very neglect and half-ruinous state of all this made it only the prettier, as well as sadder.

"Somebody couldn't see who, nohow flung him right through yon doorway, up there. He fell right over the steps crash!" Bryce looked over the tops of the yews and cypresses at the doorway in the clerestory to which Varner pointed a low, open archway gained by the half-ruinous stair. It was forty feet at least from the ground. "You saw him thrown!" he exclaimed. "Thrown down there? Impossible, man!"