He could look in all directions over the tops of the
trees below. The sun beat down fiercely upon the unsheltered rock.
Off to the north lay the pall of smoke indicating the presence
of the invisible county seat. Thin, anfractuous highways and dirt
roads scarred the green and brown landscape, and as far as the eye
could reach were to be seen farmhouses and barns and silos.
Avoiding the significant heap of rocks near the centre of the little
plateau, he made his way to the brink of the cliff overlooking
the river. There he had a wonderful view of the winding stream,
the harvest fields, the groves, and the herds in the far-reaching
stretches of what was considered the greatest corn raising "belt"
in the United States. Some yards back from the edge of the cliff
he discovered the now thoroughly rotted section of a tree trunk,
eight or ten inches in diameter, driven deeply into a narrow fissure
and rendered absolutely immovable by a solid mass of stones and
gravel that completely closed the remainder of the crevice. He was
right in surmising that this was the support from which Quill's rope
or vine ladder was suspended a hundred years ago. Nearby were two
heavy iron rings attached to standards sunk firmly into the rock,
a modern improvement on the hermit's crude device. (He afterwards
learned that David Windom, when a lad of fifteen, had drilled the
holes in the rock and imbedded the stout iron shafts, so that he
might safely descend to the mouth of the cave.
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