“But I’m no jokin’,” persisted Malcolm.
“Yes, yes; we’ll be careful,” returned his master impatiently, and Malcolm ran down the hill, but not altogether satisfied with the assurance.
CHAPTER XL.
THE DEIL’S WINNOCK.
Florimel was disappointed, for she longed to hear Malcolm’s tale. But amid such surroundings it was not so very difficult to wait. They set out to have a peep at the ruins, and choose a place for luncheon.
From the point where they stood, looking seawards, the ground sunk to the narrow isthmus supposed by Malcolm to fill a cleft formerly crossed by a drawbridge, and, beyond it, rose again to the grassy mounds in which lay so many of the old bones of the ruined carcass.
Passing along the isthmus, where on one side was a steep descent to the shore of the little bay, and on the other the live rock hewn away to wall, shining and sparkling with crystals of a clear irony brown, they next clambered up a rude ascent of solid rock, and so reached what had been the centre of the seaward portion of the castle. Here they came suddenly upon a small hole at their feet, going right down. Florimel knelt, and peeping in, saw the remains of a small spiral stair. The opening seemed large enough to let her through, and, gathering her garments tight about her, she was half-way buried in the earth before her father, whose attention had been drawn elsewhere, saw what she was about. He thought she had fallen in, but her merry laugh reassured him, and ere he could reach her, she had screwed herself out of sight. He followed her in some anxiety, but, after a short descent, rejoined her in a small vaulted chamber, where she stood looking from the little square window Malcolm had pointed out to them as they neared the shore. The bare walls around them were of brown stone, wet with the drip of rains, and full of holes where the mortar had yielded and stones had fallen out. Indeed the mortar had all but vanished; the walls stood and the vaults hung chiefly by their own weight. By breaches in the walls, where once might have been doors, Florimel passed from one chamber to another and another, each dark, brown, vaulted, damp, and weather-eaten, while her father stood at the little window she had left, listlessly watching the two men on the beach far below landing the lunch, and the rippled sea, and the cutter rising and falling with every wave of the flowing tide.
At length Florimel found herself on the upper end of a steep-sloping ridge of hard, smooth earth, lying along the side of one chamber, and leading across to yet another beyond, which, unlike the rest, was full of light. The passion of exploration being by this time thoroughly roused in her, she descended the slope, half sliding, half creeping. When she thus reached the hole into the bright chamber, she almost sickened with horror, for the slope went off steeper, till it rushed, as it were, out of a huge gap in the wall of the castle, laying bare the void of space, and the gleam of the sea at a frightful depth below: if she had gone one foot further, she could not have saved herself from sliding out of the gap. It was the very breach Malcolm had pointed out to them from below, and concerning which he had promised them the terrible tale. She gave a shriek of terror, and laid hold of the broken wall. To heighten her dismay to the limit of mortal endurance, she found at the very first effort, partly, no doubt, from the paralysis of fear, that it was impossible to reascend; and there she lay on the verge of the steeper slope, her head and shoulders in the inner of the two chambers, and the rest of her body in the outer, with the hideous vacancy staring at her. In a few moments it had fascinated her so that she dared not close her eyes lest it should leap upon her. The wonder was that she did not lose her consciousness, and fall at once to the bottom of the cliff.
Her cry brought her father in terror to the top of the slope.
“Are you hurt, child?” he cried, not seeing the danger she was in.
“It’s so steep, I can’t get up again,” she said faintly.