Rain and wind passed away in the course of the night, and next morning the sun shone softly brilliant. After a hastily demolished breakfast Burgo took his stick and portfolio--the latter in his assumed r?le of a wandering artist--and sallied forth. He retained sufficient recollection of the geography of the place to know in which direction Garion Keep lay, and thereby spare himself the necessity of an appeal to a native. But, first of all, he strolled down the one straggling street of the village to the little harbour, with its miniature jetty, at the extreme end of which was a tiny wooden erection, the harbour-master\'s office, to wit, surmounted by a lamp which turned a blood-red eye seawards during the dark hours. Everything was on a small scale, for Crag End was one of those places which never grow. As it was now so it had been as far back as the memory of its oldest inhabitant could stretch, and so it would continue to be. This morning the little harbour wore quite a deserted look, for its boats had gone northward, following in the wake of the herrings, and were not expected back for an uncertain time to come.
The hamlet nestled cosily in its narrow valley, which, in point of fact, was nothing more than a gully, or break in the sea frontage of the line of low cliffs which shut it in on the north and south. It was to the south cliff that Burgo presently addressed himself, climbing it by means of a zigzag footway which led almost directly from the harbour. Scarcely had he set foot on the short and slippery turf which crowned its summit when he saw looming before him, at a distance of a mile and a half, the grey weather-worn tower, scarred with the storms of more winters than men could reckon, because its age was known to none, which was all that now remained of the ancient Border stronghold, of which at one time it had formed a component part, known as Garion Keep.
As his eyes fell on it Burgo paused, less to gather breath after his climb than because he could no longer delay answering a certain awkward question which till now he had found no difficulty in putting aside. The question which thus intrusively thrust itself to the front was: "And now that I am here, within a mile of my uncle, what am I to do next? In what way am I nearer him than I was when I stood at the door of his London house and was refused admittance? Lady Clinton, having once succeeded in getting rid of me, will take very good care that I am never allowed to cross my uncle\'s threshold again, either in town or country." He had told himself that when he should once have succeeded in finding his uncle, he must let himself be guided by circumstances as to what his future course should be. But what if there were no circumstances to guide him? It would be the easiest thing in the world for Lady Clinton to set him and all his plans and schemes at defiance. Never had he realised his helplessness so clearly as at that moment.
He strolled slowly on in the direction of the Keep in a thoroughly downcast mood, till he was within a quarter of a mile of it. There, on a big rounded boulder, half embedded in the soil, and not improbably a relic of the ice period, he sat down to rest, for his ankle still pained him. From where he now was he had not only a near-at-hand view of the tower itself, but also of the more modern building (said to date no further back than the era of William and Mary), which was divided from it by a space of, some fifty or sixty yards, and had lately been renovated and made habitable by Sir Everard\'s orders.
Although the two structures were entirely distinct from each other they were both classed together, and had never been known by any other title than that of Garion Keep.
The modern building, which was long and low, being only two storeys in height, was constructed of large, roughly-hewn blocks of a stone indigenous to the district. The walls were of great thickness, and the high-pitched roof was covered with what looked less like slates than heavy flagstones; but on that coast the winter storms are often terrific in their force and fury, and people are wise enough to build accordingly. Although to an outsider it presented a somewhat gloomy and repellent appearance, Burgo called to mind that the interior, even as it was when he saw it, had pleased him far better than the exterior, and there was no doubt that only taste and the means were needed in order to convert it into a very charming home during the summer months. What it would be like as a dwelling-place in winter was another matter. On the landward side the house was shut in by a high wall with wrought-iron gates, enclosing a gravelled carriage sweep and a court paved with small round pebbles, and ornamented with a number of laurels and rhododendrons in green tubs. On the opposite side, between the drawing-room windows and the edge of the cliff, from which the house stood some way back, there stretched a pleasant space of lawn, interspersed with fancifully-shaped beds of the gayest flowers. Sir Everard\'s improvement to-this part of the house was a bow window with glass doors opening directly on the lawn.
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."
"Pleased to have the pleasure of your company, sir," was the landlord\'s reply.
They had reached the village, and were slowly making their way up the hilly, badly-paved street in the direction of the "Golden Owl," when Tyson, in a guarded tone, suddenly exclaimed, "Ah! here comes the siggnor with his dogs--her ladyship\'s brother--him that I told you about last night."
They were going up the street and he was coming down, carrying a dog-whip in one hand, while his two muzzled brutes ranged close upon his heels. As he passed them he bent on Burgo a keenly persistent stare. It was not the stare either of idle curiosity or of covert insolence; rather what it seemed to convey was, that, whensoever or wheresoever he might see Burgo again, he should not fail to recognise............