What gave the Tower so dark a name was the memory of old Sir James de
Nort, Mark's grand-father, an evil and secret man, who had dwelt at
Nort under some strange shadow; he had driven his son from his doors,
and lived at the end of his life with his books and his own close
thoughts, spying upon the stars and tracing strange figures in books;
since his death the old room in the turret top, where he came by his
end in a dreadful way, had been closed; it was entered by a
turret-door, with a flight of steps from the chamber below. It had
four windows, one to each of the winds; but the window which looked
upon the down was fastened up, and secured with a great shutter of
oak.

One day of heavy rain, Roland, being wearied of doing nothing, and
vexed because Mark sat so still in a great chair, reading in a book,
said to his cousin at last that he must go and visit the old room, in
which he had never set foot. Mark closed his book, and smiling
indulgently at Roland's restlessness, rose, stretching himself, and
got the key; and together they went up the turret stairs. The key
groaned loudly in the lock, and, when the door was thrown back, there
appeared a high faded room, with a timbered roof, and with a close,
dull smell. Round the walls were presses, with the doors fast; a large
oak table, with a chair beside it, stood in the middle. The walls were
otherwise bare and rough; the spiders had spun busily over the windows
and in the angles. Roland was full of questions, and Mark told him all
he had heard of old Sir James and his silent ways, but said that he
knew nothing of the disgrace that had seemed to envelop him, or of the
reasons why he had so evil a name. Roland said that he thought it a
shame that so fair a room should lie so nastily, and pulled one of the
casements open, when a sharp gust broke into the room, with so angry a
burst of rain, that he closed it again in haste; little by little, as
they talked, a shadow began to fall upon their spirits, till Roland
declared that there was still a blight upon the place; and Mark told
him of the death of old Sir James, who had been found after a day of
silence, when he had not set foot outside his chamber, lying on the
floor of the room, strangely bedabbled with wet and mud, as though he
had come off a difficult journey, speechless, and with a look of
anguish on his face; and that he had died soon after they had found
him, muttering words that no one understood. Then the two you