At last I came upon something, though whether or no it might have any
point of contact with my purpose, I could not at once decide. It was a
rude monument of some kind, a boulder placed endwise on a slab of rock
roughly hewn to form a sort of square plinth. This again was surrounded
on the outside, for the whole monument was on the very edge of a
steeply-dipping crag, by a few tiers of rough masonry. The stones were
roughly cut and laid together without mortar; or if mortar or cement
there had ever been, time and weather had washed it away. In one respect
this structure was in contrast to that above the reservoir, there was
not a sign of moss or lichen about it. The trees of the wood came close
up behind it; in front it was shut out from view below by the branches
of a few pine trees which grew crookedly from a precarious foothold
amongst the ledges of rock beneath. As I stood in front of it, I could
see nothing immediately below me; however, when I had scrambled to a
ledge a few feet lower down, the back wall of the old chapel became
visible, though partly obscured by trunks and branches of intervening
trees. I searched all over the monument for some inscription, but could
see none. Then I stood on the plinth to see if there might be any
inscription on the top of the boulder. As I stood, looking over the top
of it from the bank, I could just see through a natural alleyway amongst
the tree tops, the top of one corner of the castle, that on the side of,
and farthest from the old chapel. As I looked, a bright thought struck
me. Here was a place from which one might correspond with the castle,
unseen by any one save at the one spot. I determined then and there,
that Marjory and I should arrange some method of signalling to one
another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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