There it turned southward again and went zigzagging
downward through the forest. At the salient of that second angle was a
large flat rock, jutting out northward, overlooking the deep valley from
which the road ascended. The rock capped a high cliff; a stone dropped
from its outer edge would have fallen sheer downward one thousand feet
to the tops of the pines. The angle where the soldier lay was on another
spur of the same cliff. Had he been awake, he would have commanded a
view, not only of the short arm of the road and the jutting rock, but of
the entire profile of the cliff below it. It might well have made him
giddy to look.
The country was wooded everywhere except at the bottom of the valley to
the northward, where there was a small natural meadow, through which
flowed a stream scarcely visible from the valley's rim. This open ground
looked hardly larger than an ordinary dooryard, but was really several
acres in extent. Its green was more vivid than that of the inclosing
forest.
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