Going up the narrow stairs, the party had to climb Indian file:  in the passages they could spread out a little, and in some of the rooms in the uninhabited portion they had to walk circumspectly, as if they were crossing water on stepping-stones, for the flooring was wanting in some places, leaving a stretch of bare rafters.  Bessie tripped lightly over them, and then turned to wait for the others.  “Don’t be frightened,” she said:  “these rafters are as sound as the day they were laid down.  The flooring has not rotted:  it must have been taken up for some purpose.  They did not know how to scamp work in those days.”

“If we fall through, where shall we go?” inquired Mrs. Parker, looking down into what seemed deep mysterious darkness.

“Oh, not very far; but don’t fall:  it won’t be pleasant,” said Bessie:  “you would alight on very hard stones.”

Mr. Forrester got on the roof first, and handed up the ladies; and they all stood looking out over the country.  It was not a cold, bleak, snowy day, as Christmas in northern latitudes has a right to be.  The winter had been mild—­one of a series of mild winters, overturning the old traditions of frosts and snow-storms that lasted for months, and to a great extent stopped traffic and labor, and made traveling difficult and wearisome.  This Christmas was different.  The year was dying with calmness and dignity, and with a smile on its face, as you might take the pale gleam of sunshine to be; and if you were a little sad in mood you could suppose there was a wistfulness in the smile that was spread over the still, soft face of Nature.  Cockhoolet stood high, and the country immediately round it was flat, and much of it moorland.

  If you climb to our castle’s top,
  I don’t see where your eye can stop;
  For when you’ve passed the corn-field country,
  Where vineyards leave off flocks are packed,
  And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
  And cattle-tract to open chase,
  And open chase to the very base
  O’ the mountain.

Strike out the vineyards and that description will apply very well to Cockhoolet; and in addition you ought to have seen from its roof Edinburgh and the sea; but on this day the sea wore a garment of mist, and had wrapped the metropolis in it also, as it not unfrequently does.  You ought to have seen more than one range of hills too, yet except by eyes well acquainted with them their outlines could hardly be distinguished from the leaden gray clouds lying in bands along the horizon.

But as the party stood on the roof the clouds began to rise, tower upon tower, against the sky, and the sun, who retires early at this season, went behind them, when, instead of the pale, wistful gleam he had been keeping up all day, he suddenly threw a deep bright golden border on all the edges of the dark misty battlements which had piled themselves like castles of the Titans:  a big rift appearing at their base, there poured through it, filling up the