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Page 74
"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 towerbase. 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 into their case, my companion began to tug
at his left ear.
"Have we been over-confident?" he said, narrowing his eyes in
speculative fashion. "No less than three times I have had the idea
that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind me,
as I focused . . ."
"What do you mean, Smith?"
"Are we"--he glanced about him as though the vastness were peopled
with listening Chinamen--"followed?"
Silently we looked into one another's eyes, each seeking for the dread
which neither had named. Then:
"Come on Petrie!" said Smith, grasping my arm; and at quick march we
were off again.
Cragmire Tower stood upon a very slight eminence, and what had looked
like a green tongue, from the moorland slopes above, was in fact a
creek, flanked by lush land, which here found its way to the sea. The
house which we were come to visit consisted in a low, two-story
building, joining the ancient tower on the east with two smaller
outbuildings. There was a miniature kitchen-garden, and a few stunted
fruit trees in the northwest corner; the whole being surrounded by a
gray stone wall.
The shadow of the tower fell sharply across the path, which ran up
almost alongside of it. We were both extremely warm by reason of our
long and rapid walk on that hot day, and this shade should have been
grateful to us, In short, I find it difficult to account for the
unwelcome chill which I experienced at the moment that I found myself
at the foot of the time-worn monument. I know that we both pulled up
sharply and looked at one another as though acted upon by some mutual
disturbance.
But not a sound broke the stillness save a remote murmuring, until a
solitary sea gull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower,
uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically to my mind
sprang the lines of the poem:
Far from all brother-men, in the weird of the fen,
With God's creatures I bide, 'mid the birds that I ken;
Where the winds ever dree, where the hymn of the sea
Brings a message of peace from the ocean to me.
Not a soul was visible about the premises; there was no sound of human
activity and no dog barked. Nayland Smith drew a long breath, glanced
back along the way we had come, then went on, following the wall, I
beside him, until we came to the gate. It was unfastened, and we
walked up the stone path through a wilderness of weeds. Four windows
of the house were visible, two on the ground floor and two above.
Those on the ground floor were heavily boarded up, those above, though
glazed, boasted neither blinds nor curtains. Cragmire Tower showed not
the slightest evidence of tenancy.
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