"Better send Ambrizette with me," he said to Sallie, and the black dwarf trotted off after him in obedience to a few words from her mistress, while Mr. Jobling turned the other way, toward the Castle.
"We'll just have time to see over the old place before it's dark, Lady Josceline," the lawyer explained, and Sallie followed him with Captain Dove.
Slyne rejoined them before they were half-way up the long hill on the road which leads from the shore-level to the plateau. Sallie was still staring with troubled eyes at the huge, picturesque, rambling pile which seemed to grow always more immense as they drew nearer to it. It dwarfed into proportions almost infinitesimal the cluster of white cottages nestling cosily at the base of the great rock which formed its foundation. It seemed to dominate the whole visible world, to challenge even the mighty mountains which shut it in with the sea.
"That's the water-gate," Mr. Jobling mentioned and pointed out a black, oblong opening in the cliff-face at some height above even high-water mark and protected against possible intrusion by a heavy iron grating whose bars must have been as thick as a grown man's wrist. "I suppose the sea would be right up to its sill when the place was built.
"There's an underground passage connecting it with the interior of the castle, and they'd no doubt use that a good deal in the old days.
"And this is the North Keep, as it's called; newer, you'll maybe notice, than the west frontage, although it looks just as ancient. We'll soon have the Jura house-flag afloat again from the Warder's Tower, Lady Josceline, and the beacon-fire alight after dark. It always burns at night, you know, when the head of the family's in residence—a custom dating back to the days when there were no other lights on the coast.
"You'll see the moat now. Long ago it was always full, even at low tide. But now it's as dry as—"
"As I am!" grumbled Captain Dove, spitting down into the deep fosse which had formerly cut the castle off from the mainland but is now no more than an empty ravine spanned by an ornate drawbridge of modern date.
They crossed that, their footsteps producing an eerie clank on the planking, and came to a halt before the main entrance, over whose heavy, iron-studded oak doors still hung, a mute reminder of more stormy times, a massive portcullis armed with chevaux-de-frise of long, pointed spikes.
Slyne rang the electric door-bell.