"The trees. They're like so many ghosts ... darling, I feel as though we'd walked into the dim and haunted past. This might be Glamis Castle itself."
She seized my hand and for the first time in the whole adventure I knew she was afraid. "I think it's a trap," she said. "Oh, Will, I can't say anything to the others—after all, there's nowhere else to go—but I don't like this place!"
"It's not what you'd call cheerful."
"It's a great box propped up with bait under it, and now that we've walked under it, it's going to drop over us. Don't listen. I'm only scared. That awful man, this afternoon, telling us their damnable plan in that cool way—I feel like Peter Rabbit, nibbling on a cabbage leaf while the farmer cocks his shotgun."
"Pass me one of those cabbage leaves, Pete," I said. "I'm hungry!" Which set her giggling, and broke the evil spell.
Lugging our weapons and bags, we followed the Colonel up the big curved staircase and down the dank passage to our old quarters. We lit a lamp or two; the familiar furniture sprang out of darkness, and my gaze fell first on the table to which the Tower musket had once been clamped. That seemed half a century ago. I dropped my pig-stickers and rifles on the table. "Let's hustle up some food."
"It's stacked in the next room," said the Colonel, who had been in charge of our stores during the first residence here. "There's enough for about three weeks."
"I'll get dinner," said Marion.
"I'll go down to the wine bins and bring up a few bottles," said Johnson. Luckily, Geoff's ancestors had laid down a noble cellar full of the finest potables.