'Tusk! 'tis not Werner we want--there's the Thier speaking. No, no,
Schwartz Thier! I trust you, no doubt; but the badger smells at a hole,
before he goes inside it. We're strangers, and are allowed to miss our
way.'
Leaving the wain in Farina's charge, he pushed through a dense growth of
shrub and underwood, and came crouching on a precipitous edge of shrouded
crag, which commanded a view of the stronghold, extending round it, as if
scooped clean by some natural action, about a stone'sthrow distant, and
nearly level with the look-out tower. Sheer from a deep circular basin
clothed with wood, and bottomed with grass and bubbling water, rose a
naked moss-stained rock, on whose peak the castle firmly perched, like a
spying hawk. The only means of access was by a narrow natural bridge of
rock flung from this insulated pinnacle across to the mainland. One man,
well disposed, might have held it against forty.
'Our way's the best,' thought Guy, as he meditated every mode of gaining
admission. 'A hundred men an hour might be lost cutting steps up that
steep slate; and once at the top we should only have to be shoved down
again.'
While thus engaged, he heard a summons sounded from the castle, and
scrambled back to Farina.
'The Thier leads now,' said he, 'and who leads is captain. It seems
easier to get out of that than in.
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