It seemed to both of them to be a most singular abode for such a man as Trevelyan.  At the top of the hill there was a huge entrance through a wooden gateway, which seemed to have been constructed with the intention of defying any intruders not provided with warlike ammunition.  The gates were, indeed, open at the period of their visit, but it must be supposed that they were intended to be closed at any rate at night.  Immediately on the right, as they entered through the gates, there was a large barn, in which two men were coopering wine vats.  From thence a path led slanting to the house, of which the door was shut, and all the front windows blocked with shutters.  The house was very long, and only of one story for a portion of its length.  Over that end at which the door was placed there were upper rooms, and there must have been space enough for a large family with many domestics.  There was nothing round or near the residence which could be called a garden, so that its look of desolation was extreme.  There were various large barns and outhouses, as though it had been intended by the builder that corn and hay and cattle should be kept there; but it seemed now that there was nothing there except the empty vats at which the two men were coopering.  Had the Englishmen gone farther into the granary, they would have seen that there were wine-presses stored away in the dark corners.

They stopped and looked at the men, and the men halted for a moment from their work and looked at them; but the men spoke never a word.  Mr Glascock then asked after Mr Trevelyan, and one of the coopers pointed to the house.  Then they crossed over to the door, and Mr Glascock finding there neither knocker nor bell, first tapped with his knuckles, and then struck with his stick.  But no one came.  There was not a sound in the house, and no shutter was removed.  ’I don’t believe that there is a soul here,’ said Sir Marmaduke.

‘We’ll not give it up till we’ve seen it all at any rate,’ said Mr Glascock.  And so they went round to the other front.

On this side of the house the tilled ground, either ploughed or dug with the spade, came up to the very windows.  There was hardly even a particle of grass to be seen.  A short way down the hill there were rows of olive trees, standing in prim order and at regular distances, from which hung the vines that made the coopering of the vats necessary.  Olives and vines have pretty names, and call up associations of landscape beauty.  But here they were in no way beautiful.  The ground beneath them was turned up, and brown, and arid, so that there was not a blade of grass to be seen.  On some furrows the maize or Indian corn was sprouting, and there were patches of growth of other kinds, each patch closely marked by its own straight lines; and there were narrow paths, so constructed as to take as little room as possible.  But all that had been done had been done for economy, and nothing for beauty.  The occupiers of Casalunga had thought more of the produce of their land than of picturesque or attractive appearance.