of fortified
buildings, with turrets towering three hundred feet into the air, and
edged with fire by the setting sun. He gazed on it with perplexity.
Could it be that this enormous island fortress belonged to him, and, if
so, how on earth did one get to it? For some little time he walked
up and down, wondering, too shy to go to the village for information.
Meanwhile, though he did not notice her, a well-grown girl of about
fifteen, remarkable for her great grey eyes and the promise of her
beauty, was watching his evident perplexity from a seat beneath a rock,
not without amusement. At last she rose, and, with the confidence of
bold fifteen, walked straight up to him.

"Do you want to get the Castle, sir?" she asked in a low sweet voice,
the echoes of which Owen Davies never forgot.

"Yes--oh, I beg your pardon," for now for the first time he saw that he
was talking to a young lady.

"Then I am afraid that you are too late--Mrs. Thomas will not show
people over after four o'clock. She is the housekeeper, you know."

"Ah, well, the fact is I did not come to see over the place. I came to
live there. I am Owen Davies, and the place was left to me."

Beatrice, for of course it was she, stared at him in amazement. So this
was the mysterious sailor about whom there had been so much talk in
Bryngelly.

"Oh!" she said, with embarrassing frankness. "What an odd way to come
home. Well, it is high tide, and you will have to take a boat. I will
show you where you can get one. Old Edward will row you across for
sixpence," and she led the way round a corner of the beach to where old
Edward sat, from early morn to dewy eve, upon the thwarts of his biggest
boat, seeking those whom he might row.

"Edward," said the young lady, "here is the new squire, Mr. Owen Davies,
who wants to be rowed across to the Castle." Edward, a gnarled and
twisted specimen of the sailor tribe, with small eyes and a face that
reminded the observer of one of those quaint countenances on the handle
of a walking stick, stared at her in astonishment, and then cast a look
of suspicion on the visitor.

"Have he got papers of identification about him, miss?" he asked in a
stage whisper.

"I don't know," she answered laughing. "He says that he is Mr. Owen
Davies."

"Well, praps he is and praps he ain't; anyway, it isn't my affair, and
sixpence is sixpence."

All of this the unfortunate Mr. Davies overheard, and it did not add to
his equanimity.

"Now,