Pepper, and I volunteered my services to help to save his fences from being burnt. But it unfortunately happened that, in spite of all our efforts, fully two miles of fencing were destroyed. One of these fires was the grandest I ever saw; the flames roared like thunder, and leaped up in the forest to the height of forty or fifty feet.
After the pearly lake and the phantom island, what will you say, gentle reader, to a Giant's Castle? It is an eccentric idea of mine to give it that name. Before I attempted to explore the edifice itself, I discovered the graves of the giant and his wife, or what might be regarded as such, close to the public road and the margin of the lake. They—I mean the graves, not the bodies—lie side by side, but, as there are no monuments of any kind, I cannot be certain that the giant and his wife actually lie buried there.
The Giant's Castle is, in fact, a stupendous pile of rocks, towering one above another, and reaching to a height of about five hundred feet above the tops of the forest trees by which it is surrounded. It is a mile from the shore, and consists of a hard gray granite, or something of that kind, which seems to be impervious to the assaults of all the raging elements. At present it bears the unclassical name of Todd's Hill; but it ought to be called Castle Rock or Mount Terror. I was of course seized with an irresistible desire to ascend its perpendicular heights, and, to my great delight, my young hostess and her little niece promptly volunteered to be my guides.
We selected a fine afternoon for our excursion, and started at three o'clock. The air was calm and warm, but, unfortunately, not so free from smoke as we could have wished. The ascent was not particularly difficult, if I except the rough rocks which we had to scramble over, until we reached the foot of the enormous crags which form the ruined walls and turrets of the magnificent structure.
