which the butler had disappeared. There was nothing but bare stone
around him, with again the Morven arms cut deep into it on one side.
The ceiling was neither vaulted nor groined nor flat, but seemed
determined by the accidental concurrence of ends of stone stairs and
corners of floors on different levels. It was full ten minutes
before the man returned and requested him to follow him.

Immediately Donal found himself in a larger and less irregular
stone-case, adorned with heads and horns and skins of animals.
Crossing this, the man opened a door covered with red cloth, which
looked strange in the midst of the cold hard stone, and Donal
entered an octagonal space, its doors of dark shining oak, with
carved stone lintels and doorposts, and its walls adorned with arms
and armour almost to the domed ceiling. Into it, as if it descended
suddenly out of some far height, but dropping at last like a gently
alighting bird, came the end of a turnpike-stair, of slow sweep and
enormous diameter--such a stair as in wildest gothic tale he had
never imagined. Like the revolving centre of a huge shell, it went
up out of sight, with plain promise of endless convolutions beyond.
It was of ancient stone, but not worn as would have been a narrow
stair. A great rope of silk, a modern addition, ran up along the
wall for a hand-rail; and with slow-moving withered hand upon it, up
the glorious ascent climbed the serving man, suggesting to Donal's
eye the crawling of an insect, to his heart the redemption of the
sons of God.

With the stair yet ascending above them as if it would never stop,
the man paused upon a step no broader than the rest, and opening a
door in the round of the well, said, "Mr. Grant, my lord," and stood
aside for Donal to enter.