on towards dark, and the sun was down an hour
or so, I could see the robbers' road before me, in a trough of the
winding hills, where the brook ploughed down from the higher barrows,
and the coving banks were roofed with furze. At present, there was no
one passing, neither post nor sentinel, so far as I could descry; but
I thought it safer to wait a little, as twilight melted into night;
and then I crept down a seam of the highland, and stood upon the
Doone-track.

As the road approached the entrance, it became more straight and strong,
like a channel cut from rock, with the water brawling darkly along the
naked side of it. Not a tree or bush was left, to shelter a man from
bullets: all was stern, and stiff, and rugged, as I could not help
perceiving, even through the darkness, and a smell as of churchyard
mould, a sense of being boxed in and cooped, made me long to be out
again.

And here I was, or seemed to be, particularly unlucky; for as I drew
near the very entrance, lightly of foot and warily, the moon (which had
often been my friend) like an enemy broke upon me, topping the eastward
ridge of rock, and filling all the open spaces with the play of wavering
light. I shrank back into the shadowy quarter on the right side of the
road; and gloomily employed myself to watch the triple entrance, on
which the moonlight fell askew.

All across and before the three rude and beetling archways hung a
felled oak overhead, black, and thick, and threatening. This, as I heard
before, could be let fall in a moment, so as to crush a score of men,
and bar the approach of horses. Behind this tree, the rocky mouth was
spanned, as by a gallery with brushwood and piled timber, all upon a
ledge of stone, where thirty men might lurk unseen, and fire at any
invader. From that rampart it would be impossible to dislodge them,
because the rock fell sheer below them twenty feet, or it may be more;
while overhead it towered three hundred, and so jutted over that nothing
could be cast upon them; even if a man could climb the height. And
the access to this portcullis place--if I may so call it, being no
portcullis there--was through certain rocky chambers known to the
tenants only.

But the cleverest of their devices, and the most puzzling to an enemy,
was that, instead of one mouth only, there were three to choose from,
with nothing to betoken which was the proper access; all being pretty
much alike, and all unfenced and yawning. And the co