beneath,
fixed as they had been for centuries, with vegetation growing over them.
Some of the walls, undermined and shaken from their foundations, took
strange, oblique angles, yet refused to fall. Marks of cannon-balls were
indented on the stonework of the battered gateway, which still remained
a gateway--probably the very same under which Queen Elfrida, "fair and
false," had offered to her son the stirrup-cup.

The general impression left on the mind was not that of natural decay,
solemn and holy, but of sudden destruction, coming unawares, and
struggled against, as a man in the flower of life struggles with
mortality. There was something very melancholy about the ruined fortress
left on the hill-top in sight of the little town close below, where its
desolation was unheeded. Agatha, sensitive, enthusiastic, and easily
impressed, grew silent, and wondered that her companions could laugh
so carelessly, even when passing under the grey portal into the very
precincts of the deserted castle.

"We shall not find a soul here," said Harrie; "scarcely anybody ever
comes at this season, except when our Kingcombe Oddfellows' Club have
a picnic on this bowling-green; or schoolboys get together and climb
up the ivy to frighten the jackdaws--my husband has done it many a
time--haven't you, Duke?"

"I see mamma," vaguely responded Duke, who was busy lifting his boys
down from the carriage, with a paternal care and tenderness beautiful
to see. He then, with one little fellow on his shoulder, another holding
his hand, and a third clinging to his coat-tails, strode off up the
green ascent, without paying the slightest attention to Mrs. Harper.
Which dereliction from the rules of politeness it never once came into
her mind to notice or to blame.

"There they go! Nobody minds me; it's all Pa!" said Mrs. Dugdale, with
an assumption of wrath; a very miserable pretence, while her look was so
happy and fond. "You see, Agatha, what you'll come to--after ten years'
matrimony!"

Agatha's heart was so full, she could not laugh but sighed, yet it was
not with unhappiness.

He and Harrie wandered over the castle together, for the two Miss
Harpers did not approve of climbing. The little boys and "Pa" reappeared
now and then at all sorts of improbable and terrifically dangerous
corners, and occasionally Mrs. Dugdale made frantic darts after them.
Especially when they were all seen standing on one of the topmost
precipices, the father giving