ldn't think it, perhaps, of such a rough 'un as me, and at my time o'
life, but I never quite get my old woman out of my head."

"I don't see how any one could ever forget his mother," said Roy,
flushing a little.

"He can't, sir," said Ben, sharply; "what she taught him and said always
sticks to the worst of us. The pity of it is, that we get stoopid and
ashamed of it all--nay, not all, for it comes back, and does a lot of
good sometimes, and--pst!--pst!--if we talk so loud we shall be waking
Master Pawson. But I say, Master Roy, it won't do, really. Look at
that now!"

They were close to the circular crypt beneath the north-west tower, and
Ben was holding up his lantern towards the curve of the arches on his
left.

"Roots! coming through between the stones."

"Yes, sir, that's it. Only the trees her ladyship had planted, and
that's the beginning of pulling this corner of the castle down. There's
nothing like roots for that job. Cannon-balls'll do it, and pretty
quickly too; but give a tree time, and it'll shake stone away from
stone, and let the water come in, and then the frost freezes it, and
soon it's all over with the strongest tower ever made. Do 'ee now ask
her to have 'em cut down, and the roots burned."

"I'm not going to ask anything of the sort, Ben," said Roy, shortly.
"Now about this passage. You think it must run somewhere from here."

"Yes, sir," replied the old soldier, as he stood now under one of the
arches of the crypt and raised his lantern to open a door. "There, now
we can see a bit better. If there is such a place, it starts, I
suppose, from somewhere here."

He walked slowly round the place, holding the lantern into the recesses,
eight of which appeared between the pillars surrounding that in the
centre.

"But there's plenty of room here for storing sacks or anything else, and
you can have doors made to those two that haven't got any, if you like."

Roy walked into one of these recesses--cellar-like places of horse-shoe
curve, going in a dozen feet, and then ending in a flat wall.

"Which way am I looking here, Ben?" said Roy.

"Out'ards, sir; you're standing about level with the bottom of the moat,
or pretty nigh thereabouts. You're--yes--that's where you are, just at
the nor'-west corner, and the moat turns there."

"Then the places on each side here face the moat, one to the north, the
other to the west."

"Well, not exactly, sir, but nearly."

"Then the secret p