The Councillors of Falconhoe by Fred M. White

The days had come and gone, as the car pushed its way across Europe, till late one evening it pulled up in a lonely road under the frowning heights of the Heinfrau, where wide belts of pines came down under the snowline, and where on a broad swathe of grass and scrub a building loomed through the velvety darkness of the night. It was here that Jelicorse and his companion left the car, some four hundred yards from the great building in question, towards which they crept silently over the grass-covered road, so that the car had made little or no noise. And here the chauffeur was bidden to wait with lights extinguished and the car hidden under the branches of a tree so that no sign of it could be seen.

Even hidden as the landscape was by the cover of the night, everything seemed to convey a sense of decay and desolation. Here was a great stone wall in ruins, and on the far side what had once been a noble park before the revolutionists had invaded it, and cut down every tree for the sake of the fuel which they had so sorely needed. The broad sweep of the drive was ankle-deep in weeds, there was no sign of light or life to be seen, and it was as if the scourge of war had swept the country clean as the back of a man's hand.