ack upon the way we had come; and although we
had covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the
sunlight gleaming now and then upon the gilt lettering of the inn
sign as it swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm,
but relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had
in it the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us, then, the footpath
sloped down to Saul, unpeopled by any living thing; east and
north-east swelled the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy
distance where the sky began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west
fell the gentle gradient from the top of the slope which we had
mounted, and here, as far as the eye could reach, the country had an
appearance suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne
out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or
more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed
sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness
marked these changes, which merged into a dun coloured smudge and
again into the brilliant green; then the moor would begin once more.

"That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose," said Smith, suddenly
peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction; "and
yonder, unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire Tower."

Shading my eyes with my hand, I also looked ahead, and saw the place
for which we were bound; one of those round towers, more common in
Ireland, which some authorities have declared to be of Phoenician
origin. Ramshackle buildings clustered untidily about its base, and to
it a sort of tongue of that oddly venomous green which patched the
lowlands shot out and seemed almost to reach the tower-base. The land
for miles around was as flat as the palm of my hand, saving certain
hummocks, lesser tors, and irregular piles of boulders which dotted
its expanse. Hills and uplands there were in the hazy distance,
forming a sort of mighty inland bay which I doubted not in some past
age had been covered by the sea. Even in the brilliant sunlight the
place had something of a mournful aspect, looking like a great
dried-up pool into which the children of giants had carelessly cast
stones.

We met no living soul upon the moor. With Cragmire Tower but a quarter
of a mile off, Smith paused again, and raising his powerful glasses
swept the visible landscape.

"Not a sign, Petrie," he said softly; "yet...."

Dropping the glasses back