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in various groups was a sisterhood of secluded anemones. Across all this we passed to the farther side, as my companion had said that the sight of the place was there. And there I found it was. It was a long banquet hall, about seventy feet by twenty, of which both ends, vaulting and all, were perfect, but the middle completely ruinous. This hall formed the whole of one side of the quadrangle, and its outer wall was on the very brink of the precipice. Below were the tops of pine trees, that clung to ledge and crevice, and it would not have needed a strong arm to throw a stone that would have fallen 2,500 feet. Presently, looking up through the broken roof, I saw that above it was an upper story, roofless. ' Come,' said Mrs. St. John, ' you will like to examine that. Local tradition calls it the Queen's Lodging.' She took me into the court, and I saw—what I had not before noticed—a wide external staircase, by which this upper story was reached. We ascended the weather-worn stairs, which yet had mouldings on their edge, and reached the broken floor of these broken upper chambers. Overlooking the precipice there still remained several of the beautiful windows by which they once were lighted. The mullion of one and the tracery above it were entire ; the others reared in the air nothing but branching fragments : but each retained entire two stone seats in the recess formed by it in the thickness of the wall, and in one of these recesses Mrs. St. John and I sat down. Leaning 194 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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