46922    Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.

46923    It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky.

46924    Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.

46925    We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us.

46926    We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands.

46927    The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders.

46928    Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline.

46929    Suddenly we looked down into a cup-like depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm.

46930    Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees.

46931    The driver pointed with his whip.

46932    'Baskerville Hall,' said he.

46933    Its master had risen, and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes.

46934    A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles.

46935    The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.

46936    Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads.