"
She disappeared into the peach orchard, which tinted the garden with its
pinkish boughs, and Levin improved the chance to look over the cottage
and the landscape.
It was a mere farm, level as a floor, part of a larger clearing in the
primeval woods, where only fire or age had preyed since man was come;
and, although there seemed more land than belonged to this property, no
other house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and
tarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward at
the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed suspended
like the drab curtain of a theatre between the solemn chimney towers;
the northern chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch; the
southern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry on the King's
road.
The house where Levin Dennis now looked out was a three-roomed, frame,
double cabin, with beds in every room but the kitchen, and the hip-roof
gave considerable bed accommodation in the attic besides, the rooms
being all small, as was general in that day. Around the house extended a
pretty garden, with some cherry and plum trees and wild peach along its
boundaries, and the fields around contained many stumps, showing that
the clearing had been made not many years before, while here and there
some heaps of brush had been allowed to accumulate instead of being
burned.
As Levin looked at one of those brush-heaps in a low place, a pair of
buzzards slowly and clumsily circled up from it, and, flying low, went
round and round as if they might be rearing their young there and hated
to go far; and, for long afterwards, Levin saw them hovering high above
the spot in parental mindfulness.
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