Respectfully saluting the major-general, Charles and his attendant proceeded quietly on their way. After a brief colloquy with the orderly, Desborough moved on, to Juliana's great relief.
"At last he is gone!" she exclaimed. "Did I not act my part bravely?"
"Admirably," replied Charles. "You have saved me from the greatest peril in which I have yet been placed. Desborough, I could plainly see, suspected me. But you puzzled him."
Halting near a barrow, they watched the regiment as long as it remained in sight. They then rode on towards Stonehenge, which loomed in the distance.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
THE PARTING AT STONEHENGE.
There stand those grey mysterious circles of stones, that for centuries have braved the storms that have beaten upon the wide dreary plain on which they have been placed—none can tell how, or when. There they stand—stern, solemn, hoar, crusted with lichens, incomprehensible, enigmatical as the Sphinx; muttering tales of days forgotten, and of a people whose habits, customs, and creed are no longer understood. So strange and mysterious are the old stones, that no wonder the wildest fables have been told of them. Some have thought the pile was reared by magic art, others have deemed it the work of the Evil One, intended by him as a temple where unhallowed rites might be practised. But by whatever giant hands the mighty pile was reared, in whatever age and for whatever purpose—hallowed, or unhallowed—whether as an altar for human sacrifice, as a court of justice, or as a place of execution, all is now dim conjecture. There the huge stones stand as of yore, but their history is clean forgotten.
Though a couple of centuries are little in the history of Stonehenge, a great change has taken place since Charles visited the wondrous monument. A change for the worse. The mighty stones are there, but the aspect of the spot is altered. The genius of solitude that brooded over the pile has fled—fled with the shy bustard that once haunted its mystic circles, and with the ravens that perched on the stones. The wide rolling surface of the plain was then wholly uncultivated. Nothing was to be seen except the clustering barrows, and the banks that marked what is now called, with what truth we know not, a Roman cursus.