Here, in a large meadow, stands Long Meg, and here recline her daughters.
They are a weird group, even by daylight, more so just now, for the dusk was beginning to fall.
Long Meg is just a huge stone, standing erect and lonely, the relic of some forgotten religion; her daughters, sixty or more, lie before her in a circle. They are boulders, seen by daylight; but in the dusk, they are anything your fancy wills. Hooded women, for choice, in all positions; some crouched as if in prayer, some recumbent, some erect. He was passing these things, which he had known from his childhood, when, amidst them, and almost like one of them, he perceived a form seated on a camp stool.
It was the form of a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat.
Now, what presentiment or curiosity stirred the mind of Sir Anthony Gyde will never be known, but on perceiving this figure he reined in, then turned his horse and rode towards it.
The man had been sketching, evidently, for a small easel stood before him, but he seemed to have forgotten his work, forgotten the dusk that had overtaken him, forgotten everything, in some reverie into which he had fallen.
He must have heard the horse’s hoofs approaching, but he did not turn.
“You are sketching the stones?” said Sir Anthony, drawing rein a few feet away.
The man on the camp stool turned and looked from under the brim of his hat at the man on the horse.
There was just enough light to see his face.