On the opposite shore the rock is nearly perpendicular, the dog-rose
and the bramble hiding its crevices, and the crawling campanula
wreathing its bright bells about the sterile front, from which its
sustenance was derived, like youth clinging to the cold and insensate
bosom of age. The declivity sloping abruptly from the tower was then
covered with a wild and luxuriant underwood, stunted ash and hazel twigs
thinly occupying a succession of ridges to the summit. Here and there a
straggling oak threw its ungraceful outline over a narrow path, winding
immediately under the base of the hill,--its bare roots undermined by
oozings from above, and giving way to the slow but certain operation of
the destroyer. From the heat and dryness of the season the torrent was
much diminished, rushing into a succession of deep pools, which the full
free light of heaven had scarcely ever visited. Now dimly seen through
the hot gleams of a summer evening, they seemed wavering in the lurid
reflection from surrounding objects.
Up this narrow gorge had strayed Sir John Finett with a companion, too
busily engaged, it might seem, in their own converse to note the lapse
of time, and the probable consequences of the king's displeasure.
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