The Lady of the Shroud

Chapter 2

Letter from Rupert Sent Leger, Castle of Vissarion, the Spear of

Ivan, Land of the Blue Mountains, to Miss Janet MacKelpie, Croom

Castle, Ross-shire, N.B.

                    ;                                    January 23, 1907.

    MY DEAREST AUNT JANET,

    As you see, I am here at last.  Having got my formal duty done, as

    you made me promise--my letters reporting arrival to Sir Colin and

    Mr. Trent are lying sealed in front of me ready to post (for nothing

    shall go before yours)--I am free to speak to you.

    This is a most lovely place, and I hope you will like it.  I am quite

    sure you will.  We passed it in the steamer coming from Trieste to

    Durazzo.  I knew the locality from the chart, and it was pointed out

    to me by one of the officers with whom I had become quite friendly,

    and who kindly showed me interesting places whenever we got within

    sight of shore.  The Spear of Ivan, on which the Castle stands, is a

    headland running well out into the sea.  It is quite a peculiar

    place--a sort of headland on a headland, jutting out into a deep,

    wide bay, so that, though it is a promontory, it is as far away from

    the traffic of coast life as anything you can conceive.  The main

    promontory is the end of a range of mountains, and looms up vast,

    towering over everything, a mass of sapphire blue.  I can well

    understand how the country came to be called the "Land of the Blue

    Mountains," for it is all mountains, and they are all blue!  The

    coast-line is magnificent--what is called "iron-bound"--being all

    rocky; sometimes great frowning precipices; sometimes jutting spurs

    of rock; again little rocky islets, now and again clad with trees and

    verdure, at other places stark and bare.  Elsewhere are little rocky

    bays and indentations--always rock, and often with long, interesting

    caves.  Some of the shores of the bays are sandy, or else ridges of

    beautiful pebbles, where the waves make endless murmur.

    But of all the places I have seen--in this land or any other--the

    most absolutely beautiful is Vissarion.  It stands at the ultimate

    point of the promontory--I mean the little, or, rather, lesser

    promontory--that continues on the spur of the mountain range.  For

    the lesser promontory or extension of the mountain is in reality

    vast; the lowest bit of cliff along the sea-front is not less than a

    couple of hundred feet high.  That point of rock is really very

    peculiar.  I think Dame Nature must, in the early days of her