d Havill.

Paula bent down to Charlotte and whispered: 'Forgive my rudeness, dear.
He is not a nice enough person to be like you. He is really more like
one or other of the old pictures about the house. I forget which, and
really it does not matter.'

'People's features fall naturally into groups and classes,' remarked
Somerset. 'To an observant person they often repeat themselves; though
to a careless eye they seem infinite in their differences.'

The conversation flagged, and they idly observed the figure of the
cosmopolite Dare as he walked round his instrument in the mead and
busied himself with an arrangement of curtains and lenses, occasionally
withdrawing a few steps, and looking contemplatively at the towers and
walls.

IX.

Somerset returned to the top of the great tower with a vague
consciousness that he was going to do something up there--perhaps sketch
a general plan of the structure. But he began to discern that this
Stancy-Castle episode in his studies of Gothic architecture might be
less useful than ornamental to him as a professional man, though it was
too agreeable to be abandoned. Finding after a while that his drawing
progressed but slowly, by reason of infinite joyful thoughts more allied
to his nature than to his art, he relinquished rule and compass, and
entered one of the two turrets opening on the roof. It was not the
staircase by which he had ascended, and he proceeded to explore its
lower part. Entering from the blaze of light without, and imagining the
stairs to descend as usual, he became aware after a few steps that
there was suddenly nothing to tread on, and found himself precipitated
downwards to a distance of several feet.

Arrived at the bottom, he was conscious of the happy fact that he had
not seriously hurt himself, though his leg was twisted awkwardly. Next
he perceived that the stone steps had been removed from the turret, so
that he had dropped into it as into a dry well; that, owing to its being
walled up below, there was no door of exit on either side of him; that
he was, in short, a prisoner.

Placing himself in a more comfortable position he calmly considered
the best means of getting out, or of making his condition known. For
a moment he tried to drag himself up by his arm, but it was a hopeless
attempt, the height to the first step being far too great.

He next looked round at a lower level. Not far from his left elbow, in
the concave of the outer wall, was a sl