I turned and saw my Cousin Dorothy smiling—(and it was a very pretty sight too!)—but there was nothing else to be seen. I beat with my foot; and it rang a little hollow.
"No, no; those are the cellars," said my Cousin Tom.
I beat then upon the walls, here and there; but to no purpose; and then upon the stairs.
"That is the sloping roof of the pantry, only," said my Cousin Tom.
I confessed myself outwitted; and then with great mirth he shewed me how, over the door into the paved hall, there was a space large enough to hold three or four men; and how the panels opened on this side, as well as into the kitchen passage on the other.
"A priest or suchlike might very well lie here a week or two, might he not?" asked my Cousin Tom delightedly; "and if the sentry was at the one side, he might be fed from the other. It is cunningly contrived, is it not? A man has but to leap up here from a chair; and he is safe."
I praised it very highly, to please him; and indeed it was very curious and ingenious.
"But those days are done," I said.
"Who can tell that?" he cried—(though a week ago he had told me the same himself). "Some priest might very well be flying for his life along this road, and turn in here. Who knows whether it may not be so again?"
I said no more then on that point; though I did not believe him.