The Mallen Streak [antikvár]

One High Banks Hall showed its sparsely-windowed back to beautiful woodland and the town of Allendale in the far distance, whilst its buttressed and emblazoned and manywindowed face looked out over formal gardens on to mountainous land, so austere and wild that even its short summer beauty brought no paeans of praise except from those who had been bred within the rigours of its bosom. Away to the south lay Nine Banks Peel; to the north was the lovely little West Allen village of Whitfield; but staring the Hall straight in the face were the hills, for most part bare and barren and rising to miniature mountains which, on this day, Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of February, 1851, were thickly crusted with snow, not white, but pale pink, being tinged for the time being by the straining rays of a weak sun. The Hall was fronted by a terrace bordered by an open balustrade, its parapet festooned with stone balls, and each pillar at the top of the steps which led to the drive was surmounted by a moss-stained naked Cupid. The doors to the house were double and of black oak studded with large iron nails which gave the impression that it had withstood the attack of a fusillade of bullets. Over the door was a coat of arms composed of three shields, above it a Latin inscription had been cut into the stone which roughly translated read: Man is compassionate because he gave God a mother.