But across the heath a clump of trees rising against the pale sky seemed to shelter a group of buildings, where possibly some charitable hand might bestow broken meat on a beggar, or at least a corner in a rick-yard might afford a shelter from the bitter frost that was numbing his limbs.  It was long since he had ventured into a town where he might be questioned and recognized--the hunted man had only dared ask food or lodging at solitary farms or lonely hamlets; and as he pushed forward, the gables and twisted chimneys of a mansion house, with garden walls and dove-cote, gave him hopes of help.  He hurried on as fast as his weary limbs could carry him, with a terror of the icy darkness that was closing in like the shadow of death descending upon him, and almost at a run he reached his goal, and stood on the balustraded stone arch that crossed the ice-encumbered moat of the old house.  Then, as he raised his eyes to the building, a groan of despair broke from him; it was but the mockery of shelter he could find there. The gates before him creaked on their rusty hinges, the gryffons that had ramped so proudly on the gate-posts, had fallen from their high estate, and lay grovelling among the dead flags that fringed the moat. Dead weeds bristled white with frost between the paving-stones of the once stately courtyard, and the great house beyond loomed dark and deserted in the twilight, with windows boarded up, or gaping black and empty through their shattered casements.