ONE:The view from the top of the castle walls is magnificent, and well repays the trouble of making the ascent. In front is the city like a broad map, and there is no difficulty in tracing the lines of the streets and the sinuosities of the rivers and canals. Beyond the city, on the right, is the water of the bay, which opens into the Pacific, while on the left is the plain that stretches away to Kobe and Hiogo. Beyond the plain is the range of sharp hills and mountains; and as one turns slowly to the west and north he can sweep the landscape almost to the gates of Kioto and the shores of Lake Biwa. To the east, again, there are mountains rising sharply from the fertile plain, so that one seems to be standing in a basin of low land with a curving rim of mountains. The sun was about setting as our party reached the top of the high wall, and they remained there in full enjoyment of the scene until the shadows began to fall and the light to fade out from the sky. It was the most delightful landscape view that had fallen to the lot of the youths since their ascent of Fusiyama.Had Alice been in a condition to observe any windows and the lights in them, except those of the dark study and the illuminated bedroom at the Vicarage, she would have seen that, late as it was, there was a patch of gravel on the garden-wall outside her fathers library window which smouldered amid the darkness of the night and showed there was another wakeful inhabitant in the house. He had gone to his room very shortly after Alices disappearance from the drawing room, leaving his wife talking about table linen to Hugh. He, like Alice, wanted, though more dimly than she, the expansion of solitude. But when he got into that retreat, he found he was not quite alone in it. He had intended to look through the Leonardo publication which had just arrived, and for which he thought he thirsted. But it still lay unturned on the table. He had but unpacked and identified it, and in ten minutes had forgotten about it altogether. Another presence haunted the room and disquieted him.
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