I stop the caravan and get down to look and to read the inscription, the gist of which is as follows:
“This stone was erected to mark the spot where Eliza Shepherd, aetat 17, was cruelly murdered in 1817.”
I gaze around me. It is a lovely day, with large white cumulus clouds rolling lazily over a brilliant blue sky. It is a lonely but a lovely place, a fairy-like ferny hollow, close to the edge of a dark wood.
Yes, it is a lovely place now in the sunlight, but I cannot help thinking of that terrible night when poor young Eliza, returning from the shoemaker’s shop, met that tramp who with his knife did the ugly deed. It is satisfactory to learn that he swung for it on the gallows-tree.
But here is a notice-board worth looking at. It is a warning to dog-owners. It reads thus:—
“Notis
Trespassers will be prosecuted
dowgs will be shote.”
On a weird-looking tree behind it hangs a dead cur by the tail.
Here is a Highland post-office, simply a little red-painted dog-kennel on the top of a pole, standing all alone in the middle of a bleak moorland.