quotes_parnesius.htm



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‘The houses change from gardened villas to shut forts with watchtowers of grey stone, and great stone-walled sheepfolds, guarded by armed Britons of the North Shore. In the naked hills beyond the naked houses, where the shadows of the clouds play like cavalry charging, you see puffs of black smoke from the mines. The hard road goes on and on…’

  

This is from “On the Great Wall” in Puck of Pook’s Hill.

Parnesius, a young Roman Centurion, is telling the story of how he marched his men up through Britain, to join the garrison on Hadrian’s Wall. There, among the disgraced and the forgotten, he is to make his greatest friend, fight his greatest battles, and lose his Emperor.