"Now, let us count as the clock ticks to the number 847, and when finished, we shall be at the shrine."
"We are more apt to find a bleak moor and a sharp blast of wind," I suggested.
While under the spell of Lilly's incantations, I had almost accepted his absurd vaporings, but cooler thought had brought contempt, and I had begun to look upon our journey as a very wild goose chase indeed.
"We have found the sharp turn in the road and the bourne," said George, "and I see no reason to doubt that we shall find the shrine."
"Lilly may have passed over the road and may know that the shrine is here; but when we find it, what will it prove?" I asked.
"It will prove nothing, though I am willing to stake my life that we find
Frances in Merlin House."
"Count!" exclaimed Betty, sharply. In our discussion, George and I had forgotten to count, but Betty had been counting under her breath as the clock ticks, and we took her number and started with it.
We all reached the number 847 almost at the same second, when we stopped the coach, and sure enough, there by the roadside, on a small rocky hillock surrounded by a bleak moor, was the shrine. Even from the road we could see the fragment of a cross projecting above the one piece of wall left standing. One would hardly have taken it to be a shrine unless the fact had been suggested, but with the thought in mind, the fragmentary cross was convincing evidence. Had its sacred quality been suspected during the time of Cromwell, not one stone would have been left upon another, but no one knew that it was the Virgin's shrine, therefore it was not disturbed, but stood there, black on a field of luminous white. We all saw it at the same moment. I was content to view it from the coach, but George went to examine it, and returned, saying:—
"It is a shrine. Part of the cross still remains surmounting a fragment of a wall."
He climbed into the coach and was about to give the word to start again, when Betty spoke up, hesitatingly, pleadingly but emphatically:—