indefinitely. The deep cellars would hold grain and salt meat enough for
months, and there was a spring within the walls. Even the narrow windows
were so shaped that an arrow aimed at one of them would almost certainly
strike the cunningly-sloped side and rebound, instead of entering the
building. The gate was of massive timbers held together by heavy iron
hinges and studded with nails, and above it was a projecting stone gallery
connecting the two gateway towers. This gallery was machicolated, or built
with a series of openings in the floor, through which the defenders could
shoot arrows upon the besiegers, or pour boiling pitch down upon them.
This was a Saracen contrivance, and had been suggested and supervised by
Sir Hugh l'Estrange, who had seen the like in Spain.

There was one place where all plans had gone wrong, and that was a part of
the wall near the keep, almost under the windows of the well-chamber. It
had been built three times, and always, before it was done, the stones
would begin to slip and sink. Yesterday a section of wall had gone clean
over into the river and carried a mason with it. Fortunately he could
swim, and though nobody thought he would come out alive, he had scrambled
up the bank very cold, somewhat bruised, and sputtering like a wet cat.

That brought the matter to a crisis. There were uneasy whispers of a curse
on the mount, a tradition that no castle built there would ever be
finished, an old custom of sacrificing some human being to be buried under
the foundation of a castle for the pacifying of the ancient gods. And all
of this uncanny terror was somehow connected with a hill some distance
away toward the forest-clad mountains, where a low brown-tiled cottage
crouched like a toad, under a poplar whose leaves were ever twinkling in
the sun.

"Gualtier," queried Lady Philippa, her eye following his, "what is it