she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of
obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond
Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch
of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such
strong claims upon everybody's pity.

The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts,
and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on
a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr.
Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be
circumvented.

She went all over the stables--into loose boxes, harness and saddle
rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door
opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered,
and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been
doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while
she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at
the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which
led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself
amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in
the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof,
the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting
light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss
of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the
shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the
bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope
of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just
high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle
round the sundial.