Lady Philippa’s garden was cleared of stones in a much shorter time than she had expected.  But to build a stone wall simply by laying one stone upon another is less easy than it seems.  Roger had done something of the sort before, but he had had fragments of stone from the masons’ work instead of water-washed pebbles.  And when the keep was actually built as high as the first floor above the foundation, a heavy rain came, streams tore out one side of the mount, and the stone-work tumbled into a hopeless ruin.

In the crystal brilliance of the morning after the storm Roger surveyed it ruefully.  “Father says,” he recalled, “that everything depends on the foundations.  We’ll do it over again and make the mount more solid.”

“And when it is done,” said Eleanor, never losing faith, “I’ll beg some linen of mother and make tapestry for the walls of the little room and the great hall.”

But the stones would not stay in place.  Roger tried plastering them with mud, then with clay.  Neither would hold when dry.  Then he saw a workman repairing part of the garden wall, and in an evil moment borrowed some of the mortar while the man was gone to his dinner.  He had just set it down near the mount when Collet came to call the children to their own dinner.  The bucket remained there, and Lady Ebba’s old gray cat, chasing a hound she had discovered near the hole where her kittens were secreted, bounced off a wall and fell into the mortar—­fortunately hind feet foremost.  The indignant Jehan came searching for his bucket and kicked the pile of stones in all directions, Lady Ebba made stern inquiry into the misfortune which had come to her cat, and wall-building was abandoned.

For a week or more, Roger gardened, fished and practiced archery in a somewhat subdued fashion.  Lady Philippa, watching Eleanor’s brown head and the boy’s tousled tow-colored mop, as they consulted over a boat Roger was making, smiled and sighed.  She wished that Alazais were there to see them play together.

Not long after the disastrous building incident Sir Walter appeared one day with surprising news indeed.  Sir Stephen Giffard, the elder brother, was about to marry and come to live in the old Norman chateau.  The new chatelaine was a rich widow of Louvain.  Sir Stephen and Lady Adelicia would be the lord and lady of the castle, and would have the tapestry chamber.

“Oh, moth-er!” cried Eleanor piteously.  No other room in the castle would ever be so pleasant.  She could not understand her mother’s untroubled acceptance of the change.

“But my dear child,” Lady Philippa went on, “we shall not be here; we are going away.  King Henry has given your father a great estate in a wild country in the west of England, and he is building a castle for our home.  You will be an English maiden, sweetheart, and have your tapestry of Saint George for your very own room.”

Eleanor’s eyes were starlike.  Then her mouth began to droop a little.  “Is Roger to stay here?”