Читать книгу The City of the Sacred Well онлайн

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“My wearied brain could no longer sustain these speculations. My whole tired body knew but one desire—sleep. Yet I did not wish to sleep in this gruesome place. Half a mile farther on I should find the Casa Real, the old manor-house that was to be my home. Wearily I strove toward it in the failing moonlight.

“At last I approached the main arched gateway of the corral, built more than two hundred years ago. It was boldly outlined in the pale moonlight, while here and there were long jet shadows cast by some broken portion of a wall or by some partially burned but upright trunk of a great tree. All was desolation, as in the case of the ancient temples, but a newer desolation, for this manor had been built less than seventy years before. As I pushed my way over broken stones a cloud came over the moon and I stumbled full upon what seemed at first the vertebræ of a huge fish. The cloud passed as I halted and an involuntary shudder gripped me as I looked down on the whitened bones of a human skeleton. A little to one side on a slight elevation lay the severed skull; and just beyond was still another and yet another. Ah, yes! I knew the tragic story, but had not expected to be met with so brutal a reminder of it.