't, Alec," Annie answered.

"This is an old schoolfellow of mine," he said, turning to Kate, who
was looking haughtily at the girl.

"Oh! is it?" said Kate, condescending.

Between the two, each looking ghostly to the other, lay a dark
cavern-mouth that seemed to go down to Hades.

"Wonna ye gang doon, mem?" said Annie.

"No, thank you," answered Kate, decisively.

"Alec'll tak' guid care o' ye, mem."

"Oh! yes, I daresay; but I had rather not."

Alec said nothing. Kate would not trust him then! He would not have
thought much of it, however, but for what had passed before. Would she
have gone with Beauchamp if he had asked her? Ah! if he had asked
Annie, she too would have turned pale, but she would have laid her hand
in his, and gone with him.

"Gin ye want to gang up, than," she said, "I'll lat ye see the easiest
road. It's roun' this way."

And she pointed to a narrow ledge between the descent and the circular
wall, by which they could cross to where she stood. But Alec, who had
no desire for Annie's company, declined her guidance, and took Kate up
a nearer though more difficult ascent to the higher level. Here all the
floors of the castle lay in dust beneath their feet, mingled with
fragments of chimney-piece and battlement. The whole central space lay
open to the sky.

Annie remained standing on the edge of the dungeon-slope.

She had been on her way to see Tibbie, when she caught a glimpse of
Kate and Alec as they passed. Since watching them in the boat the
evening before, she had been longing to speak to Alec, longing to see
Kate nearer: perhaps the beautiful lady would let her love her. She
guessed where they were going, and across the fields she bounded like a
fawn, straight as the crows flew home to the precincts of that "ancient
rest," and reached it before them. She did not need to fetch the key,
for she knew a hole on the level of the grass, wide enough to let her
creep through the two yards of wall. So she crept in and took her place
near the door.

After they had rambled over the lower part of the building, Alec took
Kate up a small winding stair, past a succession of empty doorways like
eyeless sockets, leading nowhither because the floors had fallen. Kate
was so frightened by coming suddenly upon one after another of these
defenceless openings, that by the time she reached the broad platform,
which ran, all bare of parapet or battlement, around the top of the
tower, she felt faint; and