e side; on the other was a paved walk or terrace, and below, a
little garden of herbs and sweet flowers; within, was a hall on the
ground floor, with a kitchen and buttery; above that, a little chapel
and a solar; above that again, a bower and some few bedrooms, and at
the top, under the leads, a granary, to which the sacks used to be
drawn up by a chain, swung from a projecting penthouse on the top.
From the castle leads you could see the wide green flat, with dark
patches of woodland, with lines of willows marking the streams; here
and there a church tower rose from the trees; to the east a line of
wolds, and to the south a glint of sea from the estuary.

Inside, the castle was a sad place enough, dreary and neglected.
Marmaduke, the Lord of Tremontes, had been a great soldier in his
time, but he had received a grievous wound in the head, and had been
carried to Tremontes to die, and yet lingered on; his wife had long
been dead, and he had but one son, a boy of ten years old, Robert by
name, who was brought up roughly and evilly enough; he played with the
village boys, he lived with the half-dozen greedy and idle men-at-arms
who loitered in the castle, grumbling at their lack of employment, and
killing the time with drinking and foolish games and gross talk. There
was an old chaplain in the house, a lazy and gluttonous priest, who
knew enough of his trade to mumble his mass, and no more; women there
were none, except an old waiting-woman, a silent faithful soul, who
loved the boy and petted him, and mourned in secret over his miserable
upbringing, but who, having no store of words to tell her thoughts,
could only be dumbly kind to him, and careful of his childish hurts
and ailments; the boy ate and drank with the men, and aped their
swaggering and blasphemous ways, which made them laugh and praise his
cunning. The Lord Marmaduke had been nursed back into a sort of poor
life, and sate all day in a fur gown in the solar, with a velvet cap
on his head to hide his wound, which broke out afresh in the month of
May, when he had been wounded; when he was in ill case, he sate silent
and frowning, beating his hands on the table; when he was well he
muttered to himself, and laughed at Heaven knows what cheerful
thoughts, and would sing in a broken voice, fifty times on end, a
verse of a foul song; and he would suddenly smite those that tended
him, and laugh; sometimes he would wander into the chapel, and kneel
peeping through h