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also hanging on the brink of the precipice, was an oblong building with a flat grass-grown roof and an arched doorway ; and again beyond this, on a sharp, projecting crag, was a mass of masonry, roofless, but absolutely perfect, which a second glance showed me was a colossal cistern. I entered the first of these structures through some brush-wood that choked the doorway, and I found myself in a suite of chambers with Gothic windows and beautiful groined roofs. They had originally been six in number, three above and three below; but the intermediate flooring had long since given way, leaving, however, all the way round the walls a ragged fringe of mosaic, eloquent of unknown occupants. When I came out, I seated myself with my com-panion on the ground, and we looked about us, contemplating the strange scene. The part of the castle through which we had reached this solitude now revealed to me a number of architectural features—chimneys and gables, and traces of high-pitched roofs, which reminded me of many a baronial ruin in Scotland ; but what struck me most was what I saw as I looked upwards. The sides of the rock above us, which seemed to rise to the clouds, on every ledge showed fragments of windowed walls, as if half of its sides had once been cased with chambers, and over the brink at the summit appeared an arch and a few battlements. I looked up at these last as if it were hopeless to 192 IN- AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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