‘You can see about as much from here as you could if you went any nearer,’ he returned. ‘I should advise you to look and run.’
As he spoke a cool wind swept up the valley, swaying the olive trees and turning their leaves to silver. A flash of lightning followed, and a few big drops splashed in their faces.
‘We’re in for it!’ Marcia exclaimed, as she struggled to control Kentucky Lil, who was quivering and plunging.
Sybert glanced about quickly. The flying clouds overhead, and an ominous orange light that had suddenly settled down upon the landscape, betokened that a severe mountain storm was at hand. They would be drenched through before they could reach the monastery—which, after all, might not prove a hospitable order to ladies. He presently spied a low stone building nearer at hand on the slope of the hill they had just left behind. ‘We’d better make for that,’ he said, pointing it out with his whip. ‘Though it hasn’t a very promising look, it will at least be a shelter until the storm is over.’
CHAPTER XIII
The drops were falling fast by the time they reached the building. They hastily dismounted and pushed forward to the wide stone archway which served as entrance. A door of rudely joined boards swung across the opening, but it was ajar and banging in the wind. Sybert threw it open and led the horses into the gloomy interior. It proved to be a wine-cellar, probably belonging to the monastery. The room was low but deep, with a dirt floor and rough masonry walls; in the rear two huge vats rose dimly to the roof, and the floor was scattered with farming-implements. The air was damp and musty and pungent with the smell of fermenting grape-juice.
Sybert fastened the horses to a low beam by means of their bridles, while Marcia sat down upon a plough and pensively regarded the landscape. He presently joined her.
‘This is not a very cheerful refuge,’ he remarked; ‘but at least it is drier than the open road.’
She moved along and offered him part of her seat.
‘I think I can improve on that,’ he said, as he rummaged out a board from a pile of lumber and fitted it at a somewhat precarious slope across the plough. They gingerly sat down upon it and Marcia observed—