she stands there and in the fading light she looks at the house of the dead author it seems so much older a hundred years at least a few hundred more older than any ancestors of european men upon this continent she touches the walls the stone walls rough cut smooth with that haphazard quality of a grimly stacked wall the kind you might see running low over some far-off dell there is moss growing there on the bottom of the walls and the only clear surface is that of the glass windows inset and shining out .