Читать книгу The Dark River онлайн

62 страница из 94

"There's something sad about it. Don't you think so?"

"It's true of any place that nature has claimed for its own again. Tyson was telling me that, in the ancient days, this was one of the most thickly settled parts of the island."

"I'd like to have seen it then."

"I believe I prefer it as it is.... How far to go now, do you think?"

"We must be better than halfway," said McLeod. "Put your back into it a bit more now."

"Getting impatient?"

"Yes."

"You must have come this way more than once with your father and mother."

"I suppose I did. If they'd lived, Alan, I might have spent all my boyhood here. Who knows--I might never have left the island."

"I doubt that. Your parents would have gotten too homesick for Devonshire. Even if they had stayed, you'd have been sent home to school."

"What do you see ahead there, off to the left?"

"Nothing."

"You don't!"

Hardie looked again, more carefully, rubbing his eyes and then shading them with his hand. "Well, something, perhaps. It's a blur to me."