Above him, at the angle of the steep green bank of the terraced garden, was one of those small picturesque surprises common in the old landscape gardening; a kind of small round hill or dome of grass, like a giant mole-hill, ringed and crowned with three concentric fences of roses, and having a sundial in the highest point in the centre.
The wild red figure reeled an instant against the sundial; the next it had rolled down the steep bank and lay at the American's feet, faintly moving one arm.
He would not snatch Romeo's sword from its romantic scabbard; or slay his foe on the sundial as on a kind of altar; or leave his body among the roses, or fling the sword away among the pines.
Having done this, you must at once put the box out upon the sundial, as directed.
"'Put the papers on the sundial,' I read, peeping over his shoulder.
As we drove up to the porticoed front door, I observed in front of it, beside the tennis lawn, the black tool-house and the pedestalled sundial with which we had such strange associations.
None did come for a week, and then yesterday morning I found this paper lying on the sundial in the garden.
"Three days later a message was left scrawled upon paper, and placed under a pebble upon the sundial. Here it is.
Wyndham Datchet would pace up and down at the same hour every morning, with a
sundial to measure the time for him.
After the cure's death the house had been for sale; and Benassis, who had only just come into the country, had bought it as it stood, with the walls about it and the ground belonging to it, together with the plate, wine, and furniture, the old
sundial, the poultry, the horse, and the woman-servant.
Inside was a beautiful stretch of lawn with an old
sundial in the middle, the whole effect so soothing and restful that it was welcome to my somewhat jangled nerves.
There was a vertical
sundial on the front gable; and as the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and noted the hour.