delight of exploring this ruin might be denied them. In
the first courtyard, within the high broken walls, were farm-carts, with
their shafts lying idle on the ground, the tyres of the wheels brilliant
with gold-red rust. It was very still.

All eagerly paid their sixpences, and went timidly through the fine
clean arch of the inner courtyard. They were shy. Here on the pavement,
where the hall had been, an old thorn tree was budding. All kinds of
strange openings and broken rooms were in the shadow around them.

After lunch they set off once more to explore the ruin. This time the
girls went with the boys, who could act as guides and expositors. There
was one tall tower in a corner, rather tottering, where they say Mary
Queen of Scots was imprisoned.

"Think of the Queen going up here!" said Miriam in a low voice, as she
climbed the hollow stairs.

"If she could get up," said Paul, "for she had rheumatism like anything.
I reckon they treated her rottenly."

"You don't think she deserved it?" asked Miriam.

"No, I don't. She was only lively."

They continued to mount the winding staircase. A high wind, blowing
through the loopholes, went rushing up the shaft, and filled the girl's
skirts like a balloon, so that she was ashamed, until he took the hem
of her dress and held it down for her. He did it perfectly simply, as he
would have picked up her glove. She remembered this always.

Round the broken top of the tower the ivy bushed out, old and handsome.
Also, there were a few chill gillivers, in pale cold bud. Miriam wanted
to lean over for some ivy, but he would not let her. Instead, she had to
wait behind him, and take from him each spray as he gathered it and held
it to her, each one separately, in the purest manner of chivalry. The
tower seemed to rock in the wind. They looked over miles and miles of
wooded country, and country with gleams of pasture.

The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful, and in perfect
preservation. Paul made a drawing: Miriam stayed with him. She was
thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking with her strained, hopeless
eyes, that could not understand misery, over the hills whence no help
came, or sitting in this crypt, being told of a God as cold as the place
she sat in.

They set off again gaily, looking round on their beloved manor that
stood so clean and big on its hill.

"Supposing you could have THAT farm," said Paul to Miriam.

"Yes!"

"Wouldn't it be lovely to come and