"Wouldn't it be beautiful if we could build a castle on the top?" Eleanor
suggested as they stood looking at it.

"Perhaps we can--if your mother is willing. Ask her if we may have all the
stones we pick out of the garden--if we don't harm the plants--will you,
Eleanor?"

Eleanor climbed the winding stairs to the tapestry chamber, and came
flying back with the glad permission. Then the small building force went
to work in deep earnest.

"I know exactly how to build it, for I saw the building of our castle from
the very first," Roger explained.

"We lived in a tent all summer until it was done--part of it--so that we
could have a room. First they dig a ditch, just like this one, around the
mount, and they make a palisade of forest trees--whole trunks set close
together--to keep off enemies. When they have time to build a stone wall,
of course the wooden wall is taken down.

"Now here, on the most solid side of the mount, is the place for the keep.
We use the biggest stones for that. The bottom storey of father's keep is
partly cut right out of the rock, and the walls are twenty-five or thirty
feet thick. Nobody can knock down that wall with a battering-ram! Here
we'll make a great arched door, so that the knights can ride right in
without dismounting when they're hard pressed by the enemy. Here's the
drawbridge--" Roger hastily whittled off a piece of bark--"and this line
I've scratched inside the outer wall is for the wall round the inner
bailey. We'll have a watch-tower here--and here--and here. Father says