“This is, then, a hint that all our own preparations are not completed.  However lovely this spot may seem, Gertrude, we must now leave it, for some months at least.”

“Yes,” continued Mrs de Lacey, slowly following the footsteps of the governess, who had already moved from beneath the ruin; “whole fleets have often been towed to their anchors, and there warped, waiting for wind and tide to serve.  None of our sex know the dangers of the Ocean, but we who have been bound in the closest of all ties to officers of rank and great service; and none others can ever truly enjoy the real grandeur of the ennobling profession.  A charming object is a vessel cutting the waves with her taffrail, and chasing her wake on the trackless waters, like a courser that ever keeps in his path, though dashing madly on at the very top of his speed!—­”

The reply of Mrs Wyllys was not audible to the covert listeners.  Gertrude had followed her companions; but, when at some little distance from the tower, she paused, to take a parting look at its mouldering walls.  A profound stillness succeeded for more than a minute.

“There is something in that pile of stones, Cassandra,” she said to the jet-black maiden at her elbow, “that could make me wish it had been something more than a mill.”

“There rat in ’em,” returned the literal and simple-minded black; “you hear what Misse Wyllys say?”

Gertrude turned, laughed, patted the dark cheek of her attendant with fingers that looked like snow by the contrast, as if to chide her for wishing to destroy the pleasing illusion she would so gladly harbour and then bounded down the hill after her aunt and governess, like a joyous and youthful Atalanta.

The two singularly consorted listeners in the tower stood gazing, at their respective look-outs, so long as the smallest glimpse of the flowing robe of her light form was to be seen and then they turned to each other, and stood confronted, the eyes of each endeavouring to read the expression of his neighbour’s countenance.

“I am ready to make an affidavit before my Lord High Chancellor,” suddenly exclaimed the barrister, “that this has never been a mill!”

“Your opinion has undergone a sudden change!”

“I am open to conviction, as I hope to be a judge.  The case has been argued by a powerful advocate, and I have lived to see my error.”

“And yet there are rats in the place.”

“Land rats, or water rats?” quickly demanded the other, giving his companion one of those startling and searching glances, which his keen eye had so freely at command.

“Both, I believe,” was the dry and caustic reply; “certainly the former, or the gentlemen of the long robe are much injured by report.”

The barrister laughed; nor did his temper appear in the slightest degree ruffled at so free an allusion at his learned and honourable profession.

“You gentlemen of the Ocean have such an honest and amusing frankness about you,” he said, “that I vow to God you are overwhelming.  I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms.  What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship ‘stemming the waves with her taffrail,’ and chasing her wake, like a racer on the course!”