floor of the nursery and the ceiling of the room below--a hiding-place
so small that he who had hid there must have crouched on his hands and
knees or lain at full length, and yet large enough to contain a quaint
old carved oak chest, half filled with priests' vestments, which had
been hidden away, no doubt, in those cruel days when the life of a man
was in danger if he was discovered to have harbored a Roman Catholic
priest, or to have mass said in his house.

The broad outer moat was dry and grass-grown, and the laden trees of the
orchard hung over it with gnarled, straggling branches that drew
fantastical shadows upon the green slope. Within this moat there was, as
I have said, the fish-pond--a sheet of water that extended the whole
length of the garden and bordering which there was an avenue called the
lime-tree walk; an avenue so shaded from the sun and sky, so screened
from observation by the thick shelter of the over-arching trees that it
seemed a chosen place for secret meetings or for stolen interviews; a
place in which a conspiracy might have been planned, or a lover's vow
registered with equal safety; and yet it was scarcely twenty paces from
the house.

At the end of this dark arcade there was the shrubbery, where, half
buried among the tangled branches and the neglected weeds, stood the
rusty wheel of that old well of which I have spoken. It had been of good
service in its time, no doubt; and busy nuns have perhaps drawn the cool
water with their own fair hands; but it had fallen into disuse now, and
scarcely any one at Audley Court knew whether the spring had dried up or
not. But sheltered as was the solitude of this lime-tree walk, I doubt
very much if it was ever put to any romantic uses. Often in the cool of
the evening Sir Michael Audley would stroll up and down smoking his
cigar, with his dogs at his heels, and his pretty young wife dawdling by