The View from Castle Rock

eyes so bleary with the smoke, that in no time he had fallen asleep on his feet. He wakened when several pushed together out of the place and his father with them. Some one of them said, “Is this your lad here or is it some tinker squeezed in to pick our pockets?” and his father laughed and took Andrew’s hand and they began their climb. One man stumbled and another man knocked into him and swore. A couple of women swiped their baskets at the party with great scorn, and made some remarks in their unfamiliar speech, of which Andrew could only make out the words “daecent bodies” and “public footpaths.”
    Then his father and the friends stepped aside into a much broader street, which in fact was a courtyard, paved with large blocks of stone. His father turned and paid attention to Andrew at this point.
    “Do you know where you are, lad? You’re in the castle yard, and this is Edinburgh Castle that has stood for ten thousand years and will stand for ten thousand more. Terrible deeds were done here. These stones have run with blood. Do you know that?” He raised his head so that they all listened to what he was telling.
    “It was King Jamie asked the young Douglases to have supper with him and when they were fair sitten down he says, oh, we won’t bother with their supper, take them out in the yard and chop off their heads. And so they did. Here in the yard where we stand.
    “But that King Jamie died a leper,” he went on with a sigh, then a groan, making them all be still to consider this fate.
    Then he shook his head.
    “Ah, no, it wasn’t him. It was King Robert the Bruce that died a leper. He died a king but he died a leper.”
    Andrew could see nothing but enormous stone walls, barred gates, a redcoat soldier marching up and down. His father did not give him much time, anyway, but shoved him ahead and through an archway, saying, “Watch your heads here, lads, they was wee little men in those days. Wee little men. So is Boney the Frenchman, there’s a lot of fight in your wee little men.”
    They were climbing uneven stone steps, some as high as Andrew’s knees-he had to crawl occasionally-inside what as far as he could make out was a roofless tower. His father called out, “Are ye all with me then, are ye all in for the climb?” and some straggling voices answered him. Andrew got the impression that there was not such a crowd following as there had been on the street.
    They climbed far up in the roundabout stairway and at last came out on a bare rock, a shelf, from which the land fell steeply away. The rain had ceased for the present.
    “Ah, there,” said Andrew’s father. “Now where’s all the ones was tramping on our heels to get here?”
    One of the men just reaching the top step said, “There’s two-three of them took off to have a look at the Meg.”
    ’Engines of war,” said Andrew’s father. “All they have eyes for is engines of war. Take care they don’t go and blow themselves up.”
    “Haven’t the heart for the stairs, more like,” said another man who was panting. And the first one said cheerfully, “Scairt to get all the way up here, scairt they’re bound to fall off.”
    A third man-and that was the lot-came staggering across the shelf as if he had in mind to do that very thing.
    “Where is it then?” he hollered. “Are we up on Arthur’s seat?”
    “Ye are not,” said Andrew’s father. “Look beyond you.”
    The sun was out now, shining on the stone heap of houses and streets below them, and the churches whose spires did not reach to this height, and some little trees and fields, then a wide silvery stretch of water. And beyond that a pale green and grayish-blue land, part in sunlight and part in shadow, a land as light as mist, sucked into the sky.
    “So did I not tell you?” Andrew’s father said. “America. It is only a little bit of it, though, only the shore. There is where every man is sitting in the midst of his own properties, and even the beggars is riding around in carriages.”
    “Well the sea does not look so wide as I thought,” said the man who had stopped staggering. “It does not look as if it would take you weeks to cross it.”
    “It is the effect of the height we’re on,” said the man who stood beside Andrew’s father. “The height we’re on is making the width of it the less.”
    “It’s a fortunate day for the view,” said Andrew’s father. “Many a day you could climb up here and see nothing but the fog.”
    He