“Us,” said Lewis, “I like that. It is I that shall build a tower. But I will employ you.”
“That,” mused Harry slowly, “means that I build a tower and let you live in it. That isn’t right. Mr Gladstone would never allow it.”
“What has Mr Gladstone got to do with the Wilderness, I should like to know? We employ him. I should like to see him getting over the fence into the Wilderness. He does not know where it is. Besides, if he did, he could never, never, get into my tower. If he did I would immediately fling myself down from the top. Then I should be safe,” shrieked Lewis, before entering another of those vales or abysses of tears which were so black for him, and so brief. It was not so agreeable as silence would have been, or as Ann’s sewing was, or the continuous bagpipe music of a kettle always just on the boil. But Philip had gone upstairs, and the book on my knee held me more than Lewis’s tears. This book placed me in a mountain solitude such as that where David Morgan had built his tower, and, like that, haunted by curlews:
“The rugged mountain’s scanty cloak
Was dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak,
With shingles bare, and cliffs between,
And patches bright of bracken green,
And heather black that waved so high
It held the copse in rivalry.”