Although the pillar stood upon the hereditary estate of her husband the

lady had never visited it, owing to its insulation by this well-nigh

impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and

jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carriage

should be driven back empty over the clods, to wait for her on the

nearest edge of the field. She then ascended beneath the trees on foot.

The column now showed itself as a much more important erection than it

had appeared from the road, or the park, or the windows of Welland House,

her residence hard by, whence she had surveyed it hundreds of times

without ever feeling a sufficient interest in its details to investigate

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them. The column had been erected in the last century, as a substantial

memorial of her husband's great-grandfather, a respectable officer who

had fallen in the American war, and the reason of her lack of interest

was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon.

It was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do--the chronic

desire of her curiously lonely life--that had brought her here now.

She was in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse an

almost killing _ennui_. She would have welcomed even a misfortune.

She had heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could be seen.

Whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking into four counties she resolved to enjoy to-day.

The fir-shrouded hill-top was (according to some antiquaries) an old

Roman camp,--if it were not (as others insisted) an old British castle,

or (as the rest swore) an old Saxon field of Witenagemote,--with remains

of an outer and an inner vallum, a winding path leading up between their

overlapping ends by an easy ascent. The spikelets from the trees formed

a soft carpet over the route, and occasionally a brake of brambles barred

the interspaces of the trunks. Soon she stood immediately at the foot of

the column.

It had been built in the Tuscan order of classic architecture, and was

really a tower, being hollow with steps inside. The gloom and solitude

which prevailed round the base were remarkable. The sob of the

environing trees was here expressively manifest; and moved by the light

breeze their thin straight stems rocked in seconds, like inverted

pendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, or

occasionally clicked in catching each other. Below the level of their

summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun never

pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. Pads of moss grew

in the joints of the stone-work, and here and there shade-loving insects

had engraved on the mortar patterns of no human style or meaning; but

curious and suggestive. Above the trees the case was different: the

pillar rose into the sky a bright and cheerful thing, unimpeded, clean,

and flushed with the sunlight.




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