It was one of my mother's quaint sayings that the soft mossy grass, which grew luxuriantly everywhere, reminded her of charity, for that though Time had stolen much away, all its thefts were covered and hidden beneath that widely-spread mantle of turf.
I used to listen to my mother telling the stories of the place in her sweet grave voice. She and my father had charge of the Castle, and we lived in the rooms over the grand old gateway.
My mother often went round with visitors, for people came from afar to see the ruins. I liked to follow her, holding her gown bashfully, and wondering how mother knew that Queen Elizabeth had come there once, or that Simon De Montford, with a great army, marched up the valley one dark night and took the Castle by storm.
'Were you here, mother, when Queen Elizabeth came?' I asked her once.
'Oh no, Willie.'
'Then how do you know she ever came and stayed in the Queen's Tower?'
'They say she did,' mother said, smoothing my curly head.
'But do you believe it, mother? How can you tell if it is true?'
'Little Willie,' I remember that she answered, 'we must believe many things without seeing them,' and I thought that she looked up to somewhere higher than even the great Queen's Tower.
I thought a little, and then said—