"But what was her idea here?" I persisted, for the whimsicalness of the thing interested me.
"Oh, as I told you, she was virulently anti-Catholic," said Hugh carelessly. "It was she, you know, who sealed up the old family crypt and built a new one in the Priory, as the parish church is called. She probably believed that the former monks of the Priory had been more interested in their wine-cellar than in masses."
"But the 'Prior's Vent'? What on earth is that?"
"I don't know, unless it was the way to the wine-cellar. Don't you see the point?"
"No, I don't. And this 'Wysshinge Stone,' too? What could that be?"
"It must have been something connected with entering the wine-cellar. Oh, it's all perfectly simple, Jack. Crowden Priory was one of those establishments guilty of abuses which furnished Henry the Eighth with his excuse for looting the monastic orders. The facts were still a matter of memory in Lady Jane's time, and she took advantage of them to mock the Catholics. That's all."
I did not answer him for I had become engrossed in the decorations of the stone mantel, itself, a magnificent piece of freestone, sculptured in a frieze of Turks' heads, sphinxes and veiled women, ranged alternately.
"Well, she—or her masons, I should say—did a fine job," I said at last, tearing myself reluctantly from the beautiful courses of stone and the even flags of the hearth.
"You'll have plenty of time to indulge your architect's eye hereabouts," declared Hugh from the table. "Come and eat or Nikka will leave you nothing. Watty, what is the news?"
The valet deposited a chafing dish and stand by my place.