Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/84

 TANDEM.

the edge of a moor, at the extreme limits to which man had driven back savage nature, where were the last boundary walls of stone piled up without compacting mortar, was a farm-house called Court. It stood at the point where granite broke out from under the schistose beds, and where it had tilted these beds up into a perpendicular position. A vast period of time had passed since the molten granite thus broke forth, and the ragged edges of upturned rock had been weathered down to mere stumps, but on these stumps sat the homestead and farm-house of Court, with a growth of noble sycamores about it.

A stream brawling down from the moor swept half round this mass of old worn-down rock, a couple of granite slabs had been cast across it, meeting in the middle on a rude pier, and this served as a foot-bridge, but carts and waggons traversed the water, and scrambled up a steep ascent cut out of the rock by wheels and winter runs.

If Court had been a corn-growing farm, this would have been inconvenient, but this Court was not. It was a sheep and cattle rearing farm, and on it was tilled nothing but a little rye and some turnips.

In an elastic air fresh from the ocean, at a height of a thousand feet above the sea, the lungs find delight in each inhalation, and the pulses leap with perennial youth.