We stopped to rest on the Edge, perching ourselves on one of the great rounded slabs of millstone grit with all the quiet Nither valley, a sober tartan of green fields intersected by black stone dykes, at our feet and the tangled, undulating brown, green and grey plain of the moor at our backs. Piers pored over the map. With his usual luck, which he calls skill, he had hit the right footpath out of Staineshead. It was evidently little used, and I thought little of our chances of being able to keep to it all the way across the moor to Ringstones. But there was not much fear of our getting lost. With a good map, a compass (which Piers usually carries with him on our expeditions) and a clear day, we might find ourselves toiling over some rough ground, but it was improbable that we should miss the Hall altogether.
As it happened, we lost the path a good many times, for it melted away every so often into a wide patch of heather or an expanse of quaking bog, and more than once eluded us in a maze of brown hillocks and holes. Some of these places were exceedingly difficult to get across dry−shod, and, as usual, after a time I got tired of tussock−jumping and just splodged through, with the inevitable result that soon I misjudged the depth of one spongy bit and went well over the knees into the bog. When I caught up with Piers I found him standing looking back at the tract we had just picked our way through. It was a broad depression in the moor, most of it bare of heather. Between the brown pools and pallid mosses the ground was naked peat, frosted, as it were, with some kind of salty exudation. Here and there a few bleached heather roots writhed up out of the peat like twisted skeleton hands. Even under a sunny sky it was one of the loneliest−looking bits of moor I have ever set eyes on. Piers remarked that this must be the place.
There was very little, it seemed to me, to identify it with any particular place—it was just a bit left over from the raw material of Creation. But then, recollecting that he was making the assumption that Daphne Hazel's story had some kind of truth, I saw what he meant I looked round and imagined myself alone there on a cloudy grey day. I should not have liked to be alone there. I wonder why we call a moor 'dreary'? It seems as little descriptive of the true character of such a region as calling a tiger 'undomesticated'. Dreariness is a human product. If I were looking for real dreariness I should go for a tour round the outskirts of Leeds or Manchester or Sheffield, where clinkery drabness falls with such a weight it would knock holes in the bottom of your soul. There's no comparison between that Waste Land and the lonely mountain. There is power in the emptiness of the hills; and it's a hostile power. One old tin−can lying on the ground would have made all the difference. But there was no tin−can: what we could see was all so powerfully un−human as to be able to erase our knowledge of its narrow limits. What existed was what we saw; and it was the same old menacing wilderness through which the Paleolithic hunter stumbled with backward glances at pursuing shadows—cold, hunger and death.
I agreed with Piers. It might well have been the very place where Daphne Hazel lost her way. I held my soaked trousers from my legs and conceded that I might well have found the very same bog−hole.
I noticed that Piers looked carefully about him on the ground as we moved on again; and once he stopped to stare at some faint marks on a patch of bare soil. I imagine he thought he had found a footprint; but Chingachgook and his son Uncas together, with Leatherstocking to help them, couldn't have said whether it was one or not. I told him so. Piers said nothing, and we carried on. We found the path again after a while; or at least a path. It seemed to run in the general direction that we wanted and so we followed it, winding and twisting through the heather over the waves of the moor. We came after some time to a little runlet of water flowing away to our left which must undoubtedly run into the Ringstones beck, and then, as we topped a low rise beyond this, Piers stopped and pointed. Less than half a mile ahead and somewhat to the right of our line of march was a round area, higher than the surrounding moor and plainly to be distinguished for being clothed with grass while all round it was heather; and, more conspicuous still, scattered about that green patch stood a number of great dark, upright stones. Piers studied the map and cast his eyes all round, checking our position. I complimented him on his navigation. There before us was the very Stone Circle indicated by gothic lettering on the Ordnance map.
We made straight for it, and soon we were sitting side by side on a large flat oblong stone lying within the circle. I pointed out the dip in the ridge which formed our Eastern horizon and remarked that Daphne's description was sufficiently accurate. Piers jumped up. “Yes,” I agreed, “this must be the Altar Stone itself. But I shouldn't have any scruples about resting your hinder end on it. The sheep seem to have treated it with less delicacy than old man what's−his−name.” I did my best to recall the description of the place in Daphne's story and, as I did so, recollected one particular that at once seemed to me to prove that she could not have seen the place with her own eyes. I mentioned it to Piers. But he thought I was referring to the clearing of the heather from the Stone Circle to the end of the Ringstones's private road. Of that, of course, there was no trace, and Piers began to explain again what he meant by imaginative and objective truth.
“No, no,” said I. “I'm thinking only of the grass here in the circle. Doesn't she write that it was smooth and close−cropped? Well, it's as rough and tussocky as any old bit of moorland. I should say she had the description of the place from the old fellow who told her what it was like when he was a boy, perhaps, when the place was kept tidy.”
Piers shook his head, and I don't know whether he thought my suggestion sensible or not. We strolled together to the edge of the circle on the side towards the hollow where Ringstones Hall ought to lie. From there you scarcely perceived that there was a valley between the moor where the Stone Circle stands and the hill beyond. I noticed the bridle road from Blagill across the moor to our right, and saw where it dipped out of sight in front of us.
We picked our way across from the Stone Circle by a very faint and uncertain path, turned down the bridle road, which showed very little sign of use, and then, quite suddenly, saw the hill fall away before us to a steep−sided little valley. It was a surprising view: a deep cup in the moor, green and wooded; an open space of park−land in the middle and, towards the South−Eastern side, a stone house and outbuildings. We stopped and looked down. There seemed to be no one about. The only moving things were some cattle in the park.