astle was built across
the moat at the foot, and away over the sunny forest towards the village
and little church, whose spire rose about two miles away.

"I wish he wouldn't always call me `my dear pupil,' and smile at me as
if he looked down from ever so high up. I don't know how it is, but I
always feel as if I don't like him. I suppose it's because he's so
plump and smooth.

"Seems hard," mused the boy, seating himself in one of the crenellations
of the rampart, and thinking deeply, "that he should get letters with
news from London, and poor mother not have a line. That was a letter on
the table, though he pretended it was not, for I could see it began like
one. I didn't want to read it. Perhaps he was ashamed of being always
writing letters. Don't matter to me. Afraid, perhaps, that he'll be
told that he ought to attend more to teaching me. Wish he'd be always
writing letters. I can learn twice as much reading with mother."

It was very beautiful in that sunny niche in the mouldering stones close
to the tower farthest away from that occupied by the secretary, and a
spot much favoured by the boy, for from there he could look right over
the square gate-way with its flanking towers, and the drawbridge which
was never drawn, and the portcullis which was never lowered.

"Can't hear him playing here," thought Roy that day; and he
congratulated himself upon the fact, without pausing to think that the
distance was so short that the notes should have been audible.

Roy had been successful in getting off his reading with the tutor, but
he was very undecided what to do next, for there were so many things to
tempt him, and his mind kept on running in different directions. One
minute he was dwelling on his mother's troubles and the want of news
from his father, and from this it was a natural transition to thinking
of how grand it would be if he could prevail upon her to let him go up
to that far-away mysterious city, which it took days to reach on
horseback, and then he could take her letter and find where his father
was lying with his regiment, and see the army,--maybe see the king and
queen, and perhaps his father might let him stay there,--at all events
for a time.

Then he was off to thinking about the great moat, for twice over a
splash rose to his ears, and he could see the rings of water which
spread out and made the lily-leaves rise and fall.

"That was the big tench," he said to himself. "Must catch t