And that he
might not be entirely defenceless he carried Peter Chatfield's oaken
staff with him--that would certainly serve to crack any ordinary skull,
if need arose for measure of defence.
The road which Copplestone followed out of the village soon turned off
into the heart of the moorlands that lay, rising and falling in irregular
undulations, between the sea and the hills. He was quickly out of sight
of Scarhaven, and in the midst of a solitude. All round him stretched
wide expanses of heather and gorse, broken up by great masses of rock:
from a rise in the road he looked about him and saw no sign of a human
habitation and heard nothing but the rush of the wind across the moors
and the plaintive cry of the sea-birds flapping their way to the
cultivated land beyond the barrier of hills. And from that point he saw
no sign of any fall or depression in the landscape to suggest the place
which he sought. But at the next turn he found himself at the mouth of a
narrow ravine, which cut deep into the heart of the hill, and was dark
and sombre enough to seem a likely place for secret meetings, if for
nothing more serious and sinister. It wound away from a little bridge
which carried the road over a brawling stream; along the side of that
stream were faint indications of a path which might have been made by
human feet, but was more likely to have been trodden out by the mountain
sheep.
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