Ch. 6: A Tryst at an Ancient Earth Work - Page 2

whose thoughts
have been engaged with it and its barbarous grandeurs of past time the
form asserts its existence behind the night gauzes as persistently as if
it had a voice. Moreover, the south-west wind continues to feed the
intervening arable flats with vapours brought directly from its sides.

The midnight hour for which there has been occasion to wait at length
arrives, and I journey towards the stronghold in obedience to a request
urged earlier in the day. It concerns an appointment, which I rather
regret my decision to keep now that night is come. The route thither is
hedgeless and treeless--I need not add deserted. The moonlight is
sufficient to disclose the pale riband-like surface of the way as it
trails along between the expanses of darker fallow. Though the road
passes near the fortress it does not conduct directly to its fronts. As
the place is without an inhabitant, so it is without a trackway. So
presently leaving the macadamized road to pursue its course elsewhither,
I step off upon the fallow, and plod stumblingly across it. The castle
looms out off the shade by degrees, like a thing waking up and asking
what I want there. It is now so enlarged by nearness that its whole
shape cannot be taken in at one view. The ploughed ground ends as the
rise sharpens, the sloping basement of grass begins, and I climb upward
to invade Mai-Dun.

Impressive by day as this largest Ancient-British work in the kingdom
undoubtedly is, its impressiveness is increased now. After standing
still and spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its
size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing
closeness. A squally wind blows in the face with an impact which
proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night. The slope that
I so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down. Its track
can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered
grass-bents--the only produce of this upland summit except moss. Four
minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained. It is
only the crest of the outer rampart. Immediately within this a chasm
gapes; its bottom is imperceptible, but the counterscarp slopes not too
steeply to admit of a sliding descent if cautiously performed. The shady
bottom, dank and chilly, is thus gained, and reveals itself as a kind of
winding lane, wide enough for a waggon to pass along, floored with rank
herbage, and trending away, right and left, into obscurity, between the
concentric walls of earth. The towering closeness of these on each hand,
their impenetrability, and their ponderousness, are felt as a physical
pressure. The way is now up the second of them, which stands steeper and
higher than the first. To turn aside,