Rebuilding Justice!

I climbed down from the balustrade to ground level. At the base of the pillar, half-buried in dry gravel, I spotted a piece of hardware. I crouched, bracing my boots against the pebbles, and gripped the metal edge. It took two measured tugs to loosen it from the packed dirt. A galvanized hex nut, heavy and intact, roughly the size of my palm. I turned it over, scraping away the grit with my thumb to inspect the clean internal threading. Useful weight. I rolled it across a flat flagstone to test its balance, then stowed it securely against the pillar base for later recovery.