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The ancient stone-built town of Pickering is to a great extent the gateway to the moors of North-eastern Yorkshire, for it stands at the foot of that formerly inaccessible gorge known as Newton Dale, and is the meeting-place of the four great roads running north, south, east, and west, as well as of railways going in the same directions.
At the entrance there were four savages and four clubs, two to each portal, and what with the massive iron gates, surmounted by a stone wall, on which stood the family arms supported by two other club-bearers, the stone-built lodges, the Doric, ivy-covered columns which surrounded the circle, the four grim savages, and the extent of the space itself through which the high road ran, and which just abutted on the village, the spot was sufficiently significant of old family greatness.
It was a chamber in the wall, and maybe a yard square each way. The stone had not filled all its width or depth of mouth, but was, as it were, a sealed door to be broken and replaced by another. Then we could see that the canvas I had thought that I had felt was indeed the loose folds of the tied mouths of bags that were neatly arranged at the bottom of this stone-built chest.
"You would hardly think," said the Cuban, "that, a hundred years ago, a stone-built road, as straight as an arrow, ran from Cap Haitien to Millot, and that over it, Toussaint l'Ouverture, 'the Black Napoleon, was wont to ride at breakneck speed, and Christophe, 'the black Emperor, drove his gaudy carriage with much pomp and display."
That's the way we play the game." We rambled on, and passed a pleasant old stone-built cottage in the wood, with a tiny garden. "It's a curious thing," said Father Payne, "but in the spring I always want to live in all the houses I see. It's the nesting instinct, no doubt. I think I could be very happy here, for instance much happier than in my absurd big house, with all you fellows about.
Sir Thomas was a miserable man a bereaved old man who nevertheless clung to what was left, and struggled not to grieve for what was lost: there was a terrible strife going on secretly within him, dragging him this way and that: a little, lightning flash of good had been darted by Omnipotence right through the stone-built caverns of his heart, and was smouldering a concentred flame within its innermost hollow; a small soft-skinned seed had been dropped by the Father of Spirits into that iron-bound soil, and it was swelling day by day under the case-hardened surface, gradually with gentle violence, despite of all the locks and gates, and bolts and bars, a silent enemy had somehow crept within the fortress of his feelings, ready at any unguarded moment to fling the portals open.
Water was conveyed in stone-built aqueducts for hundreds of miles, from some snow-fed lake in the mountains, fertilising all the dry and sandy places through which it passed. In some of the arid valleys they dug great pits twenty feet deep and more than an acre in extent, and, after carefully preparing the soil, planted grain or vegetables. Their method of ploughing was primitive indeed.
The dingy bar-room gave place to a little sunny glen in the Highlands of Scotland, in which nestled a little cluster of stone-built cottages, moss-grown and rose-covered. Far down in the bottom of the Glen a tiny loch gleamed like a jewel.
Sight and sense of the black wooden houses, upon the forbidden island, hanging like disreputable boon companions about the grey stone-built inn, oppressed and strangely pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small windows.
Once there, I knew that I could spend a pleasant hour with the old folk, and, after that, be directed by a short cut down to the great highway in the valley, from whence an hour's walk would bring me near home. I found the place easily, for I had been there in summer. It was a substantial stone-built cottage, or little farm-house, with mullioned windows.
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