when Alec scampered off like a goat to reach
the bartizan at the other side, she sank in an agony of fear upon the
landing of the stair.

Looking down upon her from the top of the little turret, Alec saw that
she was ill, and returning instantly in great dismay, comforted her as
well as he could, and got her by degrees to the bottom. There was a
spot of grass inside the walls, on which he made her rest; and as the
sun shone upon her through one of the ruined windows, he stood so that
his shadow should fall across her eyes. While he stood thus a strange
fancy seized him. The sun became in his eyes a fiery dragon, which
having devoured half of the building, having eaten the inside out of
it, having torn and gnawed it everywhere, and having at length reached
its kernel, the sleeping beauty, whose bed had, in the long years,
mouldered away, and been replaced by the living grass, would swallow
her up anon, if he were not there to stand between and defend her. When
he looked at her next, she had indeed become the sleeping beauty he had
fancied her; and sleep had already restored the colour to her cheeks.

Turning his eyes up to the tower from which they had just descended, he
saw, looking down upon them from one of the isolated doorways, the pale
face of Patrick Beauchamp. Alec bounded to the stair, rushed to the top
and round the platform, but found nobody. Beginning to doubt his eyes,
his next glance showed him Beauchamp standing over the sleeping girl.
He darted down the screw of the stair, but when he reached the bottom
Beauchamp had again disappeared.

The same moment Kate began to wake. Her first movement brought Alec to
his senses: why should he follow Beauchamp? He returned to her side,
and they left the place, locked the door behind them, took the key to
the lodge, and went home.

After tea, Alec, believing he had locked Beauchamp into the castle,
returned and searched the building from top to bottom, even got a
candle and a ladder, and went down into the dungeon, found no one, and
went home bewildered.

While Alec was searching the vacant ruin, Beauchamp was comfortably
seated on the box of the Spitfire, tooling it halfway home--namely, as
far as the house of its owner, the laird above mentioned, who was a
relative of his mother, and whom he was then visiting. He had seen Kate
and Alec take the way to the castle, and had followed them, and found
the door unlocked. Watching them about the place, he ascended the