She glanced back toward the hotel.
"I'm not sure that I ought—"
"But that will only make it the more exciting. Please. And I've news—real news."
She nodded her head, and they crossed the courtyard to the avenue. From this bright thoroughfare they turned in a moment into a dark and unkempt street.
"See," said Minot suddenly, "the old Spanish churchyard. They built cities around churches in the old days. The world do move. It's railroad stations now."
They stood peering through the gloom at a small chapel dim amid the trees, and aged stones leaning tipsily among the weeds.
"At the altar of that chapel," Minot said, "a priest fell—shot in the back by an Indian's arrow. Sounds unreal, doesn't it? And when you think that under these musty stones lies the dust of folks who walked this very ground, and loved, and hated, like you and—"
"Yes—but isn't it all rather gloomy?" Cynthia Meyrick shuddered.
They went on, to pass shortly through the crumbling remains of the city gates. There at the water's edge the great gray fort loomed in the moonlight like a historical novelist's dream. Its huge iron-bound doors were locked for the night; its custodian home in the bosom of his family. Only its lower ramparts were left for the feet of romantic youth to tread.
Along these ramparts, close to the shimmering sea, Miss Meyrick and Minot walked. Truth to tell, it was not so very difficult to keep one's footing—but once the girl was forced to hold out an appealing hand.