Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

Burgo was still seated on the boulder, trying in vain to hit upon some means of communicating with his uncle, his eyes bent vacantly on a distant steamer, when, happening to turn his head, he saw, to his surprise, the landlord of the "Golden Owl" advancing along the footpath over the cliff as if coming direct from the inhabited part of the Keep. In one hand he carried a small basket.

"Good-morning, sir," he said to Burgo, carrying a finger to his forehead as he came up. "Going to sketch the old tower, I presume. Never a summer goes by without somebody doing the same thing. There must be a lot of likenesses of it up and down the country. I've just left the Keep, sir. Her ladyship is glad to take all the eggs I can coax my hens into laying. My boy Teddy brings 'em over every morning, only to-day he happens to be a bit out of sorts, which is the reason you see me here, sir, when I ought to be doing my cellar work at home."

He paused to take off his hat and dab his forehead with his handkerchief.

"Talking about the Keep," he presently went on, "reminds me that when I was telling you about it last night I forgot to mention one curious circumstance, which is, that while the workmen were engaged on the repairs I told you about, they came across an underground passage right through the body of the cliff, connecting what is now commonly called the Keep with the old tower. Nobody seems to know not merely when the passage was made, or why, but when and by whom it was ordered to be bricked up. However, Sir Everard caused it to be opened up afresh, and had a strong oak door fixed at either end--not, I suppose, that the passage will ever be made use of from one year's end to another."

"There must have been a use for it once on a time," said Burgo, "when people did not live such quiet lives as we do. By the way, I suppose the interior of the tower is in an altogether ruinous condition?"

Both his uncle and he had contented themselves with an outside view of it on the occasion of their brief visit some years before.

"No, sir, it's not quite as bad as that," replied Tyson; "and as I've been over it on two occasions, I ought to know. It is, I believe, a fact that Mr. Josselyn, who owned the tower before it came into the hands of Sir Everard, never made any use of it, but his uncle--so I've heard say, for it was before my time--used, if all accounts of him are true, almost to live in it. It seems that he was a great man for chemistry and experiments of various kinds, and a bit of an astronomer into the bargain. So he had the place fitted up to suit himself, and would shut himself up in it for weeks at a time--his meals being brought him from the Keep by his old housekeeper--among all the queer things he had got about him to help him in what he wanted to find out. Report has it that the country folk were afraid of him, and that's the reason why, even nowadays, they as often as not speak of the place as the 'Wizard's Tower.' The end of it was that the old man was found dead on the floor of the upper room, and the story goes that he was choked by the fumes of some deadly mixture he had been trying experiments with. Anyhow, there are his rooms to this day, pretty much, I daresay, as he left them, except, of course, that all his rubbish has been carted away long ago!"

"But how are the rooms lighted?" queried Burgo. "Two sides of the tower are visible from where we are, but there are no windows in either of them."

"There is only one window to each room, and they all front the sea."

"If you are going towards home, I think I will turn and walk with you," said Burgo, presently. "My ankle is rather painful this morning, and I'm in no humour for sketching."