Here all the
floors of the castle lay in dust beneath their feet, mingled with
fragments of chimney-piece and battlement. The whole central space lay
open to the sky.
Annie remained standing on the edge of the dungeon-slope.
She had been on her way to see Tibbie, when she caught a glimpse of
Kate and Alec as they passed. Since watching them in the boat the
evening before, she had been longing to speak to Alec, longing to see
Kate nearer: perhaps the beautiful lady would let her love her. She
guessed where they were going, and across the fields she bounded like a
fawn, straight as the crows flew home to the precincts of that "ancient
rest," and reached it before them. She did not need to fetch the key,
for she knew a hole on the level of the grass, wide enough to let her
creep through the two yards of wall. So she crept in and took her place
near the door.
After they had rambled over the lower part of the building, Alec took
Kate up a small winding stair, past a succession of empty doorways like
eyeless sockets, leading nowhither because the floors had fallen. Kate
was so frightened by coming suddenly upon one after another of these
defenceless openings, that by the time she reached the broad platform,
which ran, all bare of parapet or battlement, around the top of the
tower, she felt faint; and when Alec scampered off like a goat to reach
the bartizan at the other side, she sank in an agony of fear upon the
landing of the stair.
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