lope hand in hand
like children. There were a few winding broken steps, part of a fallen
archway, a few feet of vaulted corridor, a sudden breach--the sky
beyond--and that was all! Not all; for before them, overlooked at
first, lay a chasm covering half an acre, in which the whole of the
original edifice--tower turrets, walls, and battlements--had been
apparently cast, inextricably mixed and mingled at different depths and
angles, with here and there, like mushrooms from a dust-heap, a score
of trees upspringing.

"This is not Time--but gunpowder," said Paul, leaning over a parapet of
the wall and gazing at the abyss, with a slight grimace.

"It don't look very romantic, certainly," said Yerba. "I only saw it
from the road before. I'm dreadfully sorry," she added, with mock
penitence. "I suppose, however, SOMETHING must have happened here."

"There may have been nobody in the house at the time," said Paul
gravely. "The family may have been at the baths."

They stood close together, their elbows resting upon the broken wall,
and almost touching. Beyond the abyss and darker forest they could see
the more vivid green and regular lines of the plane-trees of Strudle
Bad, the glitter of a spire, or the flash of a dome. From the abyss
itself arose a cool odor of moist green leaves, the scent of some
unseen blossoms, and around the baking vines on the hot wall the hum of
apparently taskless and disappointed bees. There was nobody in sight in
the forest road, no one working in the bordering fields, and no
suggestion of the present. There might have been three or four
centuries between them and Strudle Bad.

"The legend of this place," said Paul, glancing at the long brown
lashes and oval outline of the cheek so near his own, "is simple, yet
affecting. A cruel, remorseless, but fascinating Hexie was once loved
by a simple shepherd. He had never dared to syllable his hopeless
affection, or claim from her a syllabled--perhaps I should say a
one-syllabled--reply. He had followed her from remote lands, dumbly
worshiping her, building in his foolish brain an air-castle of
happiness, which by reason of her magic power she could always see
plainly in his eyes. And one day, beguiling him in the depths of the
forest, she led him to a fair-seeming castle, and, bidding him enter
its portals, offered to show him a realization of his dream. But, lo!
even as he entered the stately corridor it seemed to crumble away
before hi