upon another is less easy than it seems. Roger had done something of the
sort before, but he had had fragments of stone from the masons' work
instead of water-washed pebbles. And when the keep was actually built as
high as the first floor above the foundation, a heavy rain came, streams
tore out one side of the mount, and the stone-work tumbled into a hopeless
ruin.

In the crystal brilliance of the morning after the storm Roger surveyed it
ruefully. "Father says," he recalled, "that everything depends on the
foundations. We'll do it over again and make the mount more solid."

"And when it is done," said Eleanor, never losing faith, "I'll beg some
linen of mother and make tapestry for the walls of the little room and the
great hall."

But the stones would not stay in place. Roger tried plastering them with
mud, then with clay. Neither would hold when dry. Then he saw a workman
repairing part of the garden wall, and in an evil moment borrowed some of
the mortar while the man was gone to his dinner. He had just set it down
near the mount when Collet came to call the children to their own dinner.
The bucket remained there, and Lady Ebba's old gray cat, chasing a hound
she had discovered near the hole where her kittens were secreted, bounced
off a wall and fell into the mortar--fortunately hind feet foremost. The
indignant Jehan came searching for his bucket and kicked the pile of
stones in all directions, Lady Ebba made stern inquiry into the misfortune
which had come to her cat, and wall-building was abandoned.

For a week or more, Roger gardened, fished and practiced archery in a
somewhat subdued fashion. Lady Philippa, watching Eleanor's brown head and
the boy's tousled tow-colored mop, as they consulted over a boat Roger was