Urith: A Tale of DartmoorBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
General
Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England) -- Fiction
He went over the moor in pursuit of the girl, and found her seated on
the rock with a foot swinging over the precipice. She was so startled
when he spoke to her as almost to lose her balance. He caught her hand,
and she rose to her feet.
They stood on a ledge. Two towers of rock rose with a cleft between them
like a window. The shelves of the granite were matted with whortleberry
leaves, now all ranges of colour from green, through yellow to carmine,
and with grey moss. A vein of porphyry penetrating the granite striped
it with red, and Nature had tried her delicate pencil on the stone,
staining or stippling it with her wondrously soft-toned lichenous
paints. Below, at the depth of five hundred feet, the river roared over
its red porphyry barrier, throwing into the air foam bubbles that were
caught by the wind and carried up, and danced about, and sported with
as are feathers by a wanton child. The great side of Stannon Down
opposite, rising to sixteen hundred feet, was covered by flying shadows
of forget-me-not blue and pale sulphurous gleams of sun. As the light
glided over it, it picked out the strange clusters of old circular huts
and enclosures, some with their doors and lintels unthrown down, that
were inhabited by an unknown race before history began.
Anthony put his arm round Urith. "We stand," said he, "on the edge of a
chasm; a step, a start, and one or other--perhaps both--fall into the
abyss to sheer destruction. Let me hold you; I would not let you go--if
you went, it would not be alone."
Urith did not answer; a trembling fit came on her. She stood, she felt,
at the brink of another precipice than that before her eyes.
"I could not keep away," said Anthony. "I have got into trouble with
every one, and I was afraid that you also would be set against me; so,
after I had been to see about your father's grave, that all was right
there--and Bessie had laid a garland of flowers on it--then I came back
here. I thought I must see you and explain what I forgot to say this
morning."
"You need say no more about that matter," answered Urith. "I told you at
the time that I believed your word. You said you intended no ill. I am
sure of that, quite sure. I know it is not in you to hurt."
"And yet I have hurt you and your mother, and also Fox Crymes." Then he
told her how he had struck him, and that he was afraid he had seriously
injured his eye.
"And you have brought back the gloves!" exclaimed Urith.
"Yes; here they are."
"You have not fulfilled my commission?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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