"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it all!"
"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you hadn't had enough to eat."
"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well be the chapel."
Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down into this place."
"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say they were just alike?"
"Well, I can easily get up there," she said. "And you may stay down here if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner." And, laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side directly, helping her. "Why, this is prettier than where we went this morning," she said when they reached the top: "you see the whole place better. But it's narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn't it? Oh, Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!"
"I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop," said the boy: "it would stay up there a good long time."
There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.
"Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn't it look as if a giant had taken a great bite out of it?" Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he called after her, "Is this right, Miss Langton?"
She turned her head, and for a second's space he saw her bright face, her laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself with an effort. There was blank space before him—and what below?