As they drew near I noticed that the Professor carried his arm in a sling.
“I am so glad we have met you,” Miss Seemarsh exclaimed as we greeted each other. “My father has met with an accident. Tumbled over one of his beloved rocks yesterday, cut his hand and sprained his wrist. So he cannot quarry in the landslip, poor dear. And as he absolutely refuses to lose a day and be idle, we were coming up to ask if we might see the ruins of the old castle.”
The request could hardly be refused, and we turned back together, in spite of a remonstrance on the Professor’s part that he was spoiling my walk, and that he could see all he wished without dragging me back. But it need hardly be said, I was not likely to fall in with that suggestion.
“My work,” the Professor said, in his quick jerky way, “is not by any means the easy-going business most people think it. I am sometimes hanging in a cradle for hours over a chasm perhaps a thousand feet deep. The best places for finds are often the sides of a perpendicular wall, which can only be reached by a rope above. The worst bit of this slip is comparatively child’s play, although not free from a degree of danger, as I have proved.”
We soon reached the house and had the Professor at work on the walls of the old castle.
“Very interesting remains, very interesting,” he commented. “Of course your friend has a history of the old place? Yes? I should like to see it.”
“These fragments do not tell you much?”
“Everything, up to a certain point. But scarcely the names and deeds of the early inhabitants.”
When the inspection was over, and there was not much to see, it seemed to me the height of inhospitality not to show some little civility to my own country folk. They had walked all the way from Eisenhalm, and were going to walk back. One could hardly omit to ask them to come in and rest; as for the danger, my suspicions, vague enough, were fast evaporating. When I asked them to come indoors, the Professor rather demurred. “Your friend is ill, you say. We had better not disturb him. Some other day, perhaps.”
But I felt constrained to press the invitation, and the Professor yielded. The usual elaborate German tea was brought in, and I left the room to tell Von Lindheim of my visitors. He looked rather disquieted.