f the
ledge, from a distance; for its bald and leprous-looking declivities
stood out in their nakedness from the wooded sides of The Mountain,
when this was viewed from certain points of the village. But the
nearer aspect of the blasted region had something frightful in it.
The cliffs were water-worn, as if they had been gnawed for thousands
of years by hungry waves. In some places they overhung their base so
as to look like leaning towers that might topple over at any minute.
In other parts they were scooped into niches or caverns. Here and
there they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them of such width
that one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of meeting the
regular tenants, who might treat him as an intruder.

Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicularly, with nothing but
cracks or slightly projecting edges in which or on which a foot could
find hold. High up on one of these precipitous walls of rock he saw
some tufts of flowers, and knew them at once for the same that he had
found between the leaves of his Virgil. Not there, surely! No woman
would have clung against that steep, rough parapet to gather an idle
blossom. And yet the master looked round everywhere, and even up the
side of that rock, to see if there were no signs of a woman's
footstep. He peered about curiously, as if his eye might fall on some
of those fragments of dress which women leave after them, whenever
they run against each other or against anything else,--in crowded
ballrooms, in the brushwood after picnics, on the fences after
rambles, scattered round over every place that has witnessed an act
of violence, where rude hands have been laid upon them. Nothing.
Stop, though, one moment. That stone is smooth and polished, as if it
had been somewhat worn by the pressure of human feet. There is one
twig broken among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He put his foot
upon the stone and took hold of the close-clinging shrub. In this way
he turned a sharp angle of the rock and found himself on a natural
platform, which lay in front of one of the wider fissures,--whether
the mouth of a cavern or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone made
an easy seat, upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, and
looked mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered from the
rock was at his feet. He took it and threw it down the declivity a
little below where he sat. He looked about for a stem or a straw of
some kind to bite upon,--a c