From the clearness of the
atmosphere it seemed nearer than it was, and the broken ground
compelled them to make a circuit before they reached it. Hence they
looked down upon their friends, crawling at a snail's pace along the
road to Badajoz. They rode round the weather-beaten, ruinous tower. It
was square, with only one small entrance, many feet above the ground,
and leading into a small room amidst the thick walls.
"What could this have been built for?" Lady Mabel asked.
"It is one of those watch-towers called _atalaias_," answered
L'Isle. "Many of them are scattered along the heights on the border.
They are memorials of an age in which one of people's chief
occupations was watching against the approach of their neighbors."
"Stirring times, those," said Lady Mabel. "People could not then
complain that their vigilance was lulled to sleep by too great
security; but this is, perhaps, a more comfortable age."
"To us in our island home," said L'Isle. "The improvement is more
doubtful here. There was a time when your forefathers and mine thus
kept watch against each other; when our own border hills were crowned
with similar watch-towers; but never did any country continue so long
a debatable land, and need, for so many centuries, the watch-tower and
the signal fire on its hills, as this peninsula during the slow
process of its redemption from the crescent to the cross.
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