reached it on account of the difficulty of the approach; but she had
promised herself that she would do so sooner or later, when time and tide
should permit.

Both chanced to be favourable on this particular afternoon, and she set
forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his monotonous
but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched between her
and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep shadow of the
cliff--a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a low Gothic
archway.

"I'm sure it's haunted," said Chris, and fell forthwith to dreaming as
she stepped along the sunlit sand.

Of course she would find an enchanted hall, peopled by crabs that were
not crabs at all, but the afore-mentioned knight and his retinue, all
bound by the same wicked spell. "And I shall have to find out what it is
and set him free," said Chris, with a sigh of pleasurable anticipation.
"And then, I suppose, he will begin to jabber French, and I shall wish to
goodness I hadn't. I expect he will want to marry me, poor thing! And I
shall have to explain--in French, ugh!--that as he is only a foreigner I
couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, entertain such a preposterous
notion for a single instant. No, I am afraid that would sound rather
rude. How else could I put it?"

Chris's brow wrinkled over the problem. She had reached the outlying
rocks of the belt she had to cross, and was picking her way between the
pools in deep abstraction.

"I wonder!" she murmured to herself. "I wonder!"