olets used to be, and the sorrel, and the lords
and ladies. There I tethered our friend Juniper in a quiet little nook,
and crossed the soft ground, without making any noise, to the place we
used to call our little postern. It looked so sad, compared with what
it used to be, so desolate and brambled up and ruinous, that I scarcely
should have known it, except for the gray pedestal of the prostrate dial
we used to moralise about. And the ground inside it, that was nice turf
once, with the rill running down it that perhaps supplied the moat--all
stony now, and overgrown, and tangled, with ugly-looking elder-bushes
sprawling through the ivy. To a painter it might have proved very
attractive; but to me it seemed so dreary, and so sombre, and
oppressive, that, although I am not sentimental, as you know, I actually
turned away, to put my little visit off, until I should be in better
spirits for it. And that, my dear Maria, would in all probability have
been never.

"But before I had time to begin my retreat, a very extraordinary sound,
which I cannot describe by any word I know, reached my ears. It was not
a roar, nor a clank, nor a boom, nor a clap, nor a crash, nor a thud,
but if you have ever heard a noise combining all those elements, with a
small percentage of screech to enliven them, that comes as near it as I
can contrive to tell. We know from Holy Scripture that there used to be
such creatures as dragons, though we have never seen them; but I seemed
to be hearing one as I stood there. It was just the sort of groan you
might have expected from a dragon, who had swallowed something highly
indigestible."

"My dear! And he might have swallowed you, if you had stopped. How could
you help running away, my Joshua? I should have insisted immediately
upon it. But you are so terribly intrepid!"

"Far from it, Maria. Quite the contrary, I assure you. In fact, I did
make off, for a considerable distance; not rapidly as a youth might do,
but with self-reproach at my tardiness. But the sound ceased coming; and
then I remembered how wholly we are in the hand of the Lord. A sense of
the power of right rose within me, backed up by a strong curiosity; and
I said to myself that if I went home, with nothing more than that to
tell you, I should not have at all an easy time of it. Therefore I
resolved to face the question again, and ascertain, if possible, without
self-sacrifice, what was going on among the ruins. You know every stick
a