"It shoots up suddenly, close on this side the Friar's Keep, and shoots down nearly as suddenly to where we are now. Ethel Reene climbs it occasionally, and sits there; but I think nobody else does."
"Not the preventive-men?"
"By day sometimes. Never by night; it would be too dangerous. Their beat commences here."
"And now, Charlotte, about this most unhappy business?" said Mr. North, as they began to pace backwards and forwards on the green brow of the coast, level there. "Where are we to look for Anthony? It cannot be that he is lost."
"But he is lost, George. He went into the Friar's Keep that unhappy night in February; and he was never seen to come out again. He never did come out again, as most people here believe; I, for one. What other word is there for it but lost?"
"It sounds like a fable," said George North. "Like a tale out of those romance books you used to read, Charlotte."
"I thought so when I came here first and heard it."
"Did that account you sent me contain all the details?
"I think it did. One cannot give quite so elaborate a history in writing a letter as by word of mouth. Little particulars are apt to be dropped out."
"You had better go over it to me now, Charlotte: all you know from the beginning. Omit not the smallest detail."