atalanta 's father 's house was the last building before the old town began , down a slope of trees some young and upright but some still toppled and deposited by the historic deluge , heaps of brown timber now nearly hidden in the grass , and the two of them sitting on a foundation scraped clean years ago by a wall of water but now dry and bare and quiet in the sun and the ghosts of abandoned buildings hiding under trees not far in the distance , hollow , some in fields now fenced for cattle and valued by no one but animals who sought their shade .