The Count of Monte Cristo

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Chapter 25. The Unknown.

Day, for which Dantes had so eagerly and impatiently waited with open
eyes, again dawned. With the first light Dantes resumed his search.
Again he climbed the rocky height he had ascended the previous evening,
and strained his view to catch every peculiarity of the landscape;
but it wore the same wild, barren aspect when seen by the rays of the
morning sun which it had done when surveyed by the fading glimmer of
eve. Descending into the grotto, he lifted the stone, filled his pockets
with gems, put the box together as well and securely as he could,
sprinkled fresh sand over the spot from which it had been taken, and
then carefully trod down the earth to give it everywhere a uniform
appearance; then, quitting the grotto, he replaced the stone, heaping
on it broken masses of rocks and rough fragments of crumbling granite,
filling the interstices with earth, into which he deftly inserted
rapidly growing plants, such as the wild myrtle and flowering thorn,
then carefully watering these new plantations, he scrupulously effaced