with deep hollows where human feet have trodden up and down for
centuries, and storms have sent rivulets of water pouring through many
a wild night. Some of the steps are worn quite in two and broken away,
which makes the ascent frightening to the ladies.

Up here ("on the second floor," as Bunker says) the carpet is again
grass, and Bunker and I clamber through a little archway into the
cloister gallery, where the monks used to look down on the service
below when they felt inclined. The ladies look after us, brave
adventurers that we are (only two or three million men have been here
before us, perhaps, since the ruin became a popular success), and
refuse to follow in our rash footsteps. The crumbling wall is full of
owls' nests. Rooks and swallows fly continually in and out of their
holes. We could kick a loose stone down into the chancel if there were
any stones to kick.

The ladies declare themselves dizzy and afraid, and we help them down
the dark winding turret staircase again, and go into the enclosed
parts of the ruin. Here is where the monks lived. The walls still
stand, and parts of the roof. The windows are thickly ivy-hung and
moss-grown. Here is the room where the monks did whilom dine. For
three hundred years this dining-room was in daily use, and in the spot
where erst the dining-table stood now grows a stalwart tree, whose
branches tower and spread beyond the crumbling walls. Passing strange!

More strange is the sight in the next room, the chapter-house, where
the abbot held his gravest councils, and where the most honored of the
monks were buried beneath the floor when they died. And since the
roof fell in, after long battling with storms, perhaps a hundred years
after the last monk was buried, one day a seed fell. A tree grew up in
the room. It spread its tall branches high above the piled-up stones,
and shook its brown leaves down, autumn after autumn, for years and
years. It grew slowly old, and at last it died. It fell down in its
death in the room where it had grown, and its once sturdy trunk struck
against the old ruined walls and broke. Its roots were torn out of the
ground by the fall, and stuck up their gnarled fingers in the empty
room. And the grass grew over the roots, weaving a green cloak to hide
their nakedness. The old trunk stretches now across the space in the
room, and leans its old head against the abbey wall. I didn't read
this story in a guide-book. It was told to me by the prin