The crooked high-street practically constituted the entire hamlet of
Saul, and the inn, The Wagoners, was the last house in the street.
Now, as we followed the ribbon of moor-path to the top of the rise, we
could stand and look back upon the way we had come; and although we
had covered fully a mile of ground, it was possible to detect the
sunlight gleaming now and then upon the gilt lettering of the inn
sign as it swayed in the breeze. The day had been unpleasantly warm,
but relieved by this same sea breeze, which, although but slight, had
in it the tang of the broad Atlantic. Behind us, then, the footpath
sloped down to Saul, unpeopled by any living thing; east and
north-east swelled the monotony of the moor right out to the hazy
distance where the sky began and the sea remotely lay hidden; west
fell the gentle gradient from the top of the slope which we had
mounted, and here, as far as the eye could reach, the country had an
appearance suggestive of a huge and dried-up lake. This idea was borne
out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or
more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed
sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness
marked these changes, which merged into a dun coloured smudge and
again into the brilliant green; then the moor would begin once more.
"That will be the Tor of Glastonbury, I suppose," said Smith, suddenly
peering through his field-glasses in an easterly direction; "and
yonder, unless I am greatly mistaken, is Cragmire Tower.
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