Page:The Mysterious Warning - Parsons (1796, volume 3).djvu/146

 sensibility, eying him continually with glances of disdain and suspicion.

It was the third day before they arrived at the end of their journey. For some miles they had travelled through a barren and mountainous country: At length they descended into a plain, which was extensive, and terminated with a view of another mountain, on which stood a castle, with several small fortresses on the declivities, all of which were surrounded with high walls, that reached a considerable way on the plain. At some distances from each other, thinly scattered on the skirts of the plain, and a rising hill on one side, stood a few houses; but the general appearance of the country seemed desolate and uncultivated.

Ferdinand was permitted to take a view of this cheerless prospect, as they crossed the plain towards a large pair of gates fixed in the wall at the foot of a scraggy part of the mountain, and at one end of the wide extended plain. Here a paper was delivered to the sentinel at the gates, which, having