But he could not find the stair; and had to clamber among the rocks and copse-wood the best way he could.

But when he emerged at top, there was nothing but the bare heath.

Then the clouds stole over the moon again, and he moved along with hesitation and difficulty, and once more he saw the outline of the castle against the sky, quite sharp and clear.

But this time it proved to be a great battlemented mass of cloud on the horizon.

In a few minutes more he was quite close, all of a sudden, to the great front, rising gray and dim in the feeble light, and not till he could have struck it with his good oak "wattle" did he discover it to be only one of those wild, gray frontages of living rock that rise here and there in picturesque tiers along the slopes of those solitary mountains.