They were close to the circular crypt beneath the north-west tower, and Ben was holding up his lantern towards the curve of the arches on his left.
“Roots! coming through between the stones.”
“Yes, sir, that’s it. Only the trees her ladyship had planted, and that’s the beginning of pulling this corner of the castle down. There’s nothing like roots for that job. Cannon-balls’ll do it, and pretty quickly too; but give a tree time, and it’ll shake stone away from stone, and let the water come in, and then the frost freezes it, and soon it’s all over with the strongest tower ever made. Do ’ee now ask her to have ’em cut down, and the roots burned.”
“I’m not going to ask anything of the sort, Ben,” said Roy, shortly. “Now about this passage. You think it must run somewhere from here.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the old soldier, as he stood now under one of the arches of the crypt and raised his lantern to open a door. “There, now we can see a bit better. If there is such a place, it starts, I suppose, from somewhere here.”
He walked slowly round the place, holding the lantern into the recesses, eight of which appeared between the pillars surrounding that in the centre.
“But there’s plenty of room here for storing sacks or anything else, and you can have doors made to those two that haven’t got any, if you like.”
Roy walked into one of these recesses—cellar-like places of horse-shoe curve, going in a dozen feet, and then ending in a flat wall.
“Which way am I looking here, Ben?” said Roy.
“Out’ards, sir; you’re standing about level with the bottom of the moat, or pretty nigh thereabouts. You’re—yes—that’s where you are, just at the nor’-west corner, and the moat turns there.”