“That won’t do.”
After repeating them, he drops back on the boat’s thwart, and sits for a while considering, with eyes turned toward the cliff, ranging it up and down.
“Ah!” he exclaims at length, “the very thing; as if the devil himself had fixed it for me! That will do; smash the bush to atoms—blot out everything, as if an earthquake had gone over Llangorren.”
While thus oddly soliloquising, his eyes are still turned upward, apparently regarding a ledge which, almost loose as a boulder, projects from the bank above. It is directly over the juniper, and if detached from its bed, as it easily might be, would go crashing down, carrying the bush with it.
And that same night it does go down. When the morning sun lights up the cliff, there is seen a breakage upon its face just underneath the summer-house. Of course, a landslip, caused by the late rains acting on the decomposed sandstone. But the juniper bush is no longer there; it is gone, root and branch!
Volume Three—Chapter Three.
Reasoning by Analysis.
Captain Ryecroft’s start at seeing: a woman within the pavilion was less from surprise than an emotion due to memory. When he last saw his betrothed alive it was in that same place, and almost in a similar attitude—leaning over the baluster rail. Besides, many other souvenirs cling around the spot, which the sight vividly recalls; and so painfully that he at once turns his eyes away from it, nor again looks back. He has an idea who the woman is, though personally knowing her not, nor ever having seen her.