"Don't be a fool, Trenmore!" Drayton spoke with a brusqueness born of mingled horror and amazement. That uncanny, half-glimpsed thing now appeared to be stretching itself upward, higher and higher in the partial shadow where it stood. "Think of your sister," he cried, "and help me get her away from this unspeakable place before it's too late. Look-look there at that wall!"
The wall he referred to was the same behind which he had first come upon Trenmore. Before their incredulous eyes it seemed to come to life, to rise, and to grow upward.
"They're alive, these stones! They're alive!" cried Viola.
Trenmore held back no longer. Here was something with which even his great strength was not fit to contend. All about them the fallen rocks, the walls, the very flagstones beneath their feet were heaving, moving, and the motion seemed all the more sinister and terrible because of the silence which attended it.
Drayton reached desperately for Viola's arm or hand; but Terry simply plucked her from the ground as one gathers up a child and began running across the court in great leaps and bounds. In one spring he cleared the nearest wall and ran on down the hill. Drayton followed at a speed nearly as great, and only caught up with the Irishman at the foot of the hill, where they both paused as by one impulse to look back.
During his flight Drayton had been filled with a ghastly, unnatural terror. He had feared that the ruins were coming after him, lichenous, soil-incrusted, horribly animate! But now, looking back, that fear at least was banished. The bare hillside, almost white in the moonlight, was crowned still by its broken walls. But were they broken now?
"By heaven, it's like-like-"
"Like a mirage," supplied Viola, who seemed suddenly to have achieved a curious composure. "Put me down, Terry. No, put me down, I say! I wish to see better. Yes, it's growing fast. In a few minutes we shall see the whole castle as it used to be."
Her calm assurance struck Drayton as odd, but only for a moment. After all, why shouldn't a castle grow up like a flower-like a flower with a magic scent? Down here on the plain the grass was filled with flowers and the air with their fragrance. There was something peculiarly soothing and reassuring in the very odor of them.
Drayton no longer felt the least alarm-hardly, even, wonder. Not though a miracle was occurring on the hilltop above.