Beyond the stream lay a level plain stretching towards the sea, divided into numberless fields, and dotted with farmhouses and hamlets.

On the side where the friends were walking, the ground was more broken, rising in places into small hills, many of them wooded.

Half a mile away was one of a conical shape, on whose top towered a castle.

Old and gray and sullen, it lifted itself from the foliage around it like a great rock from a summer sea, and stood out against the clear blue sky of the June morning.

The hill was covered with wood, mostly rather young, but at the bottom were some ancient firs and beeches.