The space behind extended to the verge of the river-bank, which, falling down a sheer precipice of forty or fifty feet, required no defence of stakes, and seemed never to have been provided with them; while that in front circumscribed a portion of a cleared field entirely destitute of trees, and almost of bushes.
Such had been the original plan and condition of a fortified private-dwelling, a favourable specimen, perhaps, of the _family-forts_ of the day, and which, manned by five or six active and courageous defenders, might have bidden defiance to thrice the number of barbarians that had actually succeeded in storming it.

Its present appearance was ruinous and melancholy in the extreme.

The stockade was in great part destroyed, especially in front, where the stakes seemed to have been rooted up by the winds, or to have fallen from sheer decay; and the right wing or cot, that had suffered most from the flames, lay a black and mouldering-pile of logs, confusedly heaped on its floor, or on the earth beneath.

The only part of the building yet standing was the cot on the left hand, which consisted of but a single room, and that, as Roland perceived at a glance, almost roofless and ready to fall.
Nothing could be more truly cheerless and forbidding than the appearance of the ruined pile; and the hoarse and dismal rush of the river below, heard the more readily by reason of a deep rocky fissure, or ravine, running from the rear yard to the water's edge, through which the sound ascended in hollow echoes, added double horror to its appearance.

It was, moreover, obviously insecure and untenable against any resolute enemy, to whom the ruins of the fallen wing and stockade and the rugged depths of the ravine offered much more effectual shelter, as well as the best place of annoyance.