going to fetch a pig home in. Denny said--

'I say, you might give us a lift. Will you?'

The man who was going for the pig said--

'What, all that little lot?' but he winked at Alice, and we saw
that he meant to aid us on our way. So we climbed up, and he
whipped up the horse and asked us where we were going. He was a
kindly old man, with a face like a walnut shell, and white hair and
beard like a jack-in-the-box.

'We want to get to the tower,' Alice said. 'Is it a ruin, or not?'

'It ain't no ruin,' the man said; 'no fear of that! The man wot
built it he left so much a year to be spent on repairing of it!
Money that might have put bread in honest folks' mouths.'

We asked was it a church then, or not.

'Church?' he said. 'Not it. It's more of a tombstone, from all I
can make out. They do say there was a curse on him that built it,
and he wasn't to rest in earth or sea. So he's buried half-way up
the tower--if you can call it buried.'

'Can you go up it?' Oswald asked.

'Lord love you! yes; a fine view from the top they say. I've never
been up myself, though I've lived in sight of it, boy and man,
these sixty-three years come harvest.'