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Carteret's door, which had on an old brass plate the proprietor's name, as if he had been the principal surgeon. The house was in the high part, and the neat roofs of other houses, lower down the hill, made an immediate prospect for it, scarcely counting, however, since the green country was just below these, familiar and interpenetrating, in the shape of small but thick-tufted gardens.
I sat down on the grassy ledge and looked out across the lichen-covered roofs and squat, rugged church tower of Tarn Regis; and pictures rose in my mind, pictures to some extent inspired, perhaps, by scraps I had read of learned essays written by my father. He had loved this ancient ground; he had been used to finger the earth hereabouts as a man might finger his mistress's hair.
The wire, too, was undisturbed, but an atmosphere of alarm and dread clung about the scattered ranches even as far as the Agua Fria to the west, and the few officials left at Prescott found it impossible to reassure the settlers, who, quitting their new homes, had either clustered about some favored ranch for general defense or, "packing" to Fort Whipple, were clamoring there for protection with which to return to and occupy their abandoned roofs.
"Yes," replied the F.A.N.Y. cheerfully "drunk!" The Boche had flown over at 3 a.m. but so low down the Archies were powerless to get him. As one of the men said to me, "If we'd had rifles, Miss, we could have potted him easy." He flew from shed to shed dropping incendiary bombs on the roofs as he passed, and up they went like fireworks.
When they came up to the wall they saw that it was well builded of good ashlar, and so high that they might not see the roofs of the town because of it; but there were tall towers on it, a many of them, strong and white. The road led up straight to the master-gate of the Burg, and there was a bailey before it strongly walled, and manned with weaponed men, and a captain going about amongst them.
The level last rays of the disappearing sun flashed upon the window-panes so that they glowed like painted windows illuminated from within, with a reddish lustre, and the roofs and the brown sides of the building, painted by those great masters in color, the sun and the sea-wind, in that moment were like burnished gold. Involuntarily Jack exclaimed: "It is the Golden House!"
The wind that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens that hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw closer together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green tree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.
And it seems as though somewhere in the world, there must be something better worth the name of work, for me to do." And letting her hands fall in her lap, she looked away over the numberless roofs of the city, to the grey line of the river beyond. "Oh! Will," she went on in a little, "you do not know. You who have your life's work laid out before you, can never understand how it is with me.
The walls were constructed of reeds, the interstices being filled up with loam; and the roofs were covered with palm leaves. On one side of the house was a coffee plantation, and on the other some fields of maize, with fruit-trees growing round them. At a little distance, on some marshy ground, was a field of sugar-canes; and by the side of a brook a row of the useful banana.
On the night preceding, the whole city was illuminated and decorated with garlands; the Forum, as morning approached, was filled with "the people," arranged in their several tribes, clothed in white robes and bearing boughs of laurel; the Praetorians, in their splendid arms, were drawn up in two lines from the further extremity of the Forum to the Rostra, to maintain the avenue of approach clear; all the roofs of the buildings on every side were thronged with crowds of spectators; at break of day Nero arrived in the attire appropriated to triumphs, accompanied by the members of the Senate and his body-guard, and took his seat on the Rostra in a curule chair.
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