Pausing in the centre, he gazed round with a
strange disconcerted air--at the castle on the terraced hillside,
looking down with bright eyes of glass glittering in the sunshine,
and lighting up even that grim old pile; at the banner hanging so
lazily that the tinctures and bearings were hidden in the folds; then
at the crags, rosy purple in evening glow, rising in broad step above
step up to the Red Eyrie, bathed in sunset majesty of dark crimson;
and above it the sweep of the descending eagle, discernible for a
moment in the pearly light of the sky. The pilgrim's eye lighted up
as he watched it; but then, looking down at bridge, and church, and
trodden wheel-tracked path, he frowned with perplexity, and each
painful step grew heavier and more uncertain.
Near the opposite side of the enclosure there waited a tall, rugged-
looking, elderly man with two horses--one an aged mare, mane, tail,
and all of the snowiest silvery white; the other a little shaggy dark
mountain pony, with a pad-saddle. And close to the bank of the
stream might be seen its owner, a little girl of some seven years,
whose tight round lace cap had slipped back, as well as her blue silk
hood, and exposed a profusion of loose flaxen hair, and a plump,
innocent face, intent upon some private little bit of building of her
own with some pebbles from the brook, and some mortar filched from
the operations above, to the great detriment of her soft pinky
fingers.
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