‘The hut was at least clean,’ said Robson, as he ushered them in; and Mary felt as if it were a great deal more.  It was rudely built, and only the part near the hearth was lined with matting; the table and the few stools and chairs were rough carpentry, chiefly made out of boxes; but upon the wall hung a beautiful print from Raffaelle, of which she knew the giver as surely as if his name had been written on it; and the small bookcase suspended near contained, compressed together, an epitome of Louis’s tastes—­the choicest of all his favourites, in each class of book.  Mary stood by it, reading the names, and trying to perceive Louis’s principle of selection in each case.  It jarred upon her when, as the gentlemen loitered about, waiting for the evening meal, they came and looked at the titles, with careless remarks that the superintendent was a youth of taste, and a laugh at the odd medley—­Spenser, Shakspeare, ‘Don Quixote,’ Calderon, Fouque, and selections from Jeremy Taylor, &c.

Mary would hear no more comments.  She went to the fire, and tried to persuade Rosita they would come safe down again; and then, on the apology for a mantelshelf, she saw some fossils and some dried grasses, looking almost as if Fitzjocelyn had put them there.

She did not see Madison that night; but the next morning he presented himself to act as their guide through the wonders of the extraordinary region where his lot had been cast.  She found that this was only the first floor of the wondrous castle.  Above and above, rose galleries, whence the ore was lowered down to the buildings here placed, where it underwent the first process of separation.  The paths above were fit for none, save a chamois, or a barefooted Indian, or a sailor—­for the midshipman was climbing aloft in such places, that Tom’s chief work was to summon him back, in horror lest he should involve himself in endless galleries, excavated before the days of Atahualpa.

Much of the desperate scrambling which Madison recommended as plain-sailing, was beyond Mr. Ponsonby; but where he went, Mary went; and when he stopped, she, though she had not drawn since the master at her school had resigned her, as a hopeless case, applied herself to the perpetration of an outline of the rocks, that, as she said, ’her aunts might see what sort of place it was.’  Her steady head, and firm, enterprizing hand and foot, enabled her to see the crowning wonder of the mountain, one of the ventanillas or windows.  Mr. Ward, having visited it, came back bent on taking her thither; there was no danger, if she were not afraid.  So, between him and Tom Madison, she was dragged up a steep path, and conducted into a gallery cut out in the living rock, growing gloomier and gloomier, till suddenly there was a spot of light on the sparkling floor, and Mary found herself beneath an opening through the mountain crown, right up into the sky, which, through the wild opening, looked of the deepest, most ultra-marine, almost