Near the famous old stone itself,
surmounting a barrow-like tumulus, grew stunted bracken; and here Joan
presently sat down full of happiness in that her pilgrimage had been
achieved. The granite pillar of Men Scryfa was crested with that fine
yellow-gray lichen which finds life on exposed stones; upon the windward
side clung a few atoms of golden growth; and its rude carved inscription
straggled down the northern face. The monument rose sheer above black
corpses of crooked furze, for fire had swept this region also, adding not a
little to the prevailing sobriety of it, and only the elemental splendor of
weather and the canopy of blue and gold beneath which spread this
desolation rendered it less than mournful. Even under these circumstances
imagination, as though rebelling against the conditions of sunshine and
summer then maintaining, leaped to picture Men Scryfa under the black
screaming of winter storm or rising darkly upon deep snows; casting a
transitory shadow over a waste ghastly blue under flashes of lightning, or
throbbing to its deep roots when thunder roared over the moor and the levin
brand hissed unseen into quag and fen.
The double crown of Carn Galvas fronted Joan as she presently sat with her
back resting against the stone; and a medley of the old thoughts rose not
unwelcome in her mind. Giant mythology seemed a true thing in sight of
these vast regular piles of granite; and the thought of the kind simple
monsters who had raised that earn led to musings on the "little people.
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