“Looks as if it was meant to keep people out, now doesn’t it?” said Babe cheerfully.
“Come and help me over,” called Babbie, trying to dig her toes into the wire meshes.
“Isn’t trespassing a dreadful crime over here?” asked Betty anxiously, when they had all succeeded in getting over.
“Dreadful,” answered Madeline solemnly, “but the cliffs are too steep to climb, and we can’t go all the way back to the beach. Besides, we haven’t any guns. Trespassers are always supposed to be looking for game, I think.”
Part of the way the sheep-trail led so near to the water’s edge that it made Babbie dizzy, and once they had to cross a rickety little wooden bridge over a deep ravine and Betty got over only by bravely shutting her eyes and trying to believe Babe’s blithe assertion that a good fat sheep, like those they saw on the hillsides, must weigh almost as much as a smallish girl. But the worst of it was, they couldn’t find the castle.
“Lost: one perfectly good ruin, well off tram-lines,” chanted Babbie wearily. “The cliffs aren’t steep here. Let’s climb up to the highest point and see if we can’t find a farmhouse where we can ask our way.”
But at the same moment that they discovered the farmhouse they saw the castle—or rather a thickly wooded point where Babe was sure it was hidden, so they pushed straight on without stopping to make inquiries. A low stone wall separated the wood from the moorland, and Babe was just stepping over it, when she stopped and gave a funny little exclamation.
“Our Dutchmen,” she said to Madeline. “They must be the wardens of the castle. Anyhow they’re camping in the wood.”
“Can’t we go on?” inquired Babbie anxiously.
“Of course,” said Madeline with decision. “Baedeker would have told us if it hadn’t been open to tourists. Come on, Babbie.”