"Take me to the door."
The boy obeyed; Donatus put out his hand for the knocker, his hand grasped the air.
"The door is open," said the lad.
"Wait out here," said Donatus, and he went in. He easily found his way across the familiar court-yard; it was incomprehensible that the door should be open and no one in the way. He felt his way by the wall to the inner entrance--this too was open. He felt to right and left of him--the door-posts were there, but no door! Perhaps he had mistaken his way in the open space, and was in a quite different direction to what he believed. But how could there be a gap in the walled quadrangle that formed the court-yard if it were not the doorway? He will call out--does no one hear him? he listens--no answer! There is something gruesome in this silence; an unaccountable alarm takes possession of him. He can feel the stone of the threshold quite plainly with his foot--he is standing in the very doorway; then if he feels to the right the wall must be there, and the holy-water vessel of stone--yes, there it is, and the vessel too, so he has come the right way, he dips his hand in the piscina to take the holy-water--it is empty. It is strange, who can have emptied it?
He comes to the door of the refectory--there at last the brethren must certainly be. Here are the carved and iron-bound door-posts, he feels for the massive handle--again he grasps the empty air, and his foot is on the vacant threshold.
Is he delirious? or does his blindness cheat him with false ideas of space? His sense of touch perhaps betrays him--or some demon is tricking him, and juggling with his senses to torment him? Perhaps he is still out in the sheds, and only fancies he has made his way to the refectory?
A searching draught blew in his face through the open halls and corridors; a sickening wind bringing a horrible reek of smoke as if it blew across the dead embers of a burnt city, and a cloud of dusty ashes was wafted into his face.
"Is no one there?" He called aloud--all was still.
Then he walked on again--aimlessly, taking no particular direction in the darkness; suddenly his foot struck some unwonted object. He stooped--the refectory table lay in pieces at his feet--again he perceived the same strange smell of burning, and his hand fell on some charred fragments--the table was half burnt. Donatus walked all round it; wherever he trod there were ruins; he started back, finding himself suddenly at the opposite wall. Then he felt for a window--his feet trampled on crashing splinters of glass--the opening was empty, the wood work all charred.
Invasion had been here, and the fearful traces that it leaves wherever it enters--terror and desolation--depicted themselves vividly on the blind man's fancy.