“‘I should like to have sent for a screwdriver; but probably I can get one on our way back,’ was my answer; and with that we drove away.
“In about half an hour, proceeding by unfrequented roads, we came in sight of Kohlstein. It was a vast four-sided mass of gray rock, seamed with deep clefts and fissures running horizontally and vertically, so that it appeared to have been built of gigantic blocks of stone. It was considerably over one hundred feet in sheer height, and it stood upon a rising ground of shifting sand. Slender trees grew here and there out of the crevices of its headlong sides, and straggled nakedly along its level summit, outlined against the sky. It was an ideal place for a robber stronghold; impregnable, certainly, to any attack save that of the heaviest modern artillery.
“‘We must get out and walk from here,’ remarked Mr. Birchmore. ‘There’s only one way of getting to the top, and that’s on the other side. I have got a touch of my rheumatics to-day, and hardly think I shall be able to do the climbing. However, that needn’t interfere with you young people, of course.’
“I exchanged a covert look with Kate as I helped her to descend from the carriage; and she pressed my hand and smiled. I admired her courage as much as I lamented the apparent lack of it in her father. The horse having been unharnessed and tethered where some cool grass grew beside a stream, we struck off across the sandy upland; Slurk carrying the big basket, Mr. Birchmore walking with a rather feeble step near him, and Kate and I in front. It was an even hotter day than yesterday, and the tramp was a wearisome one. By the time we arrived at the foot of the Stein, we were quite ready to rest a few minutes in the shadow of the rock, for coolness and breath.
“‘No, I can’t do it!’ said Mr. Birchmore, wiping his forehead and glancing hopelessly up at the narrow white footpath that seemed to mount almost straight upward to the distant summit. ‘Just leave me here, with a few sandwiches and a bottle of hock, and I shall do very comfortably till you come back.’
“It was certainly very arduous work clambering up that ladder-like path, and I doubt whether Kate’s determination and mine would have held out, had the motive which urged us been merely one of curiosity. But the top was gained at last, and we threw ourselves down on the dry grass to rest and to be fanned by the welcome breeze that blew there. Slurk placed the basket in a little hollow where some bushes kept off the direct rays of the sun, and stretched himself at full length beside it.
“‘Now, let us walk about,’ suggested Kate at length in an undertone; ‘we must see what there is to be seen.’
“We had already arranged all the steps by which we were to proceed to the achievement of our purpose, and we felt that the sooner it was ended now the better. The surface on which we stood, though preserving a general level, was full of irregularities and unevennesses; it was overgrown with low bushes and parched grass, with perhaps half-a-dozen starved and meagre trees. Here and there the naked rock jutted forth from the thin soil, crumbling and weatherworn, its surface stained in places with dry lichens. The entire table was scarcely two-thirds of an acre in area; and a more forlorn and uncongenial spot, even in the midst of summer, it would be hard to find. The cave in which the robbers lived was somewhere lower down; we had passed its entrance on our way up; but it was here, probably, that an outlook was kept over the country, to spy out the approach of victims or of enemies. It struck me that it was hardly worth while to be a bandit, if one must put up with such bleak and unattractive quarters in which to carry on the business.
“Kate and I wandered over this barren summit hand in hand. The moment was now very near that was to make a great change in the world for both of us. We felt, somehow, as if we were taking leave of a certain part of our lives then. At least, I remember gazing out across the wide expanse of sunlit country that stretched far away on every side, and wondering whether it would look the same an hour hence. Slurk all the while lay beside his basket, and appeared to be asleep.