"Machen, Arthur - The Shining Pyramid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Machen Arthur)

bridge the hills rose again, vast and rounded like bastions, covered here and
there with dark woods and thickets of undergrowth, but the heights were all bare
of trees, showing only grey turf and patches of bracken, touched here and there
with the gold of fading fronds. Dyson looked to the north and south, and still
he saw the wall of the hills, and the ancient woods, and the stream drawn in and
out between them; all grey and dim with morning mist beneath a grey sky in a
hushed and haunted air.

Mr. Vaughan's voice broke in upon the silence.

"I thought you would be too tired to be about so early," he said. "I see you are
admiring the view. It is very pretty, isn't it, though I suppose old Meyrick
Vaughan didn't think much about the scenery when he built the house. A queer
grey, old place, isn't it?"

"Yes, and how it fits into the surroundings; it seems of a piece, with the grey
hills and the grey bridge below."

"I am afraid I have brought you down on false pretences, Dyson," said Vaughan,
as they began to walk up and down the terrace. "I have been to the place, and
there is not a sign of anything this morning."

"Ah, indeed. Well, suppose we go round together."
They walked across the lawn and went by a path through the ilex shrubbery to the
back of the house. There Vaughan pointed out the track leading down to the
valley and up to the heights above the wood, and presently they stood beneath
the garden wall, by the door.

"Here, you see, it was," said Vaughan, pointing to a spot on the turf. "I was
standing just where you are now that morning I first saw the flints."

"Yes, quite so. That morning it was the Army, as I call it; then the Bowl, then
the Pyramid, and, yesterday, the Half Moon. What a queer old stone that is," he
went on, pointing to a block of limestone, rising out of the turf just beneath
the wall. "It looks like a sort of dwarf pillar, but I suppose it is natural."

"Oh, yes, I think so. I imagine it was brought here, though, as we stand on the
red sandstone. No doubt it was used as a foundation stone for, some older
building."

"Very likely." Dyson was peering about him attentively, looking from the ground
to the wall, and from the wall to the deep wood that hung almost over the garden
and made the place dark even in the morning.

"Look here," said Dyson at length, "it is certainly a case of children this
time. Look at that."

He was bending down and staring at the dull red surface of the mellowed bricks
of the wall. Vaughan came up and looked hard where Dyson's finger was pointing,
and could scarce distinguish a faint mark in deeper red.