Below them stretched stairs and more stairs of the dark purplish brown stone of the island, all the long, steep, curving way up which they had come. Slowly the stairway had widened, houses dropped away and now, level with the eye, rose the second and third stories of the fortress-like dwellings that fringed the town. Chimneys incredibly thick threw long morning shadows of rich blue on salmon pink walls and grey tiled roofs. Round towers lent piquant variety to the outlines and the incongruity of a bedquilt stuffed through the window of a beetling fortress, to air above a frowning keep, made Cynthia’s fingers tingle for paper and pencil with which to note it all down. Below the windows, tiny gardens--something pinkish, something ochre--Cynthia with eyes half closed to shut out shapes of things saw only color where some thrifty Normandy farmer had planted provender for the coming winter. And cabbages, so green they were almost blue, jewel vivid, jewel bright. Cynthia nodded. Tomorrow she would bring her paint box. “My stool, Cynthia dear.” Amusedly Mrs. Brewster broke in on her reverie. “I’ll be here for two hours at least. Run along and don’t fall off any parapets or into any oubliettes.” “What’s an oubliette?” asked Cynthia racing upward beside Nancy. “It’s a ‘forgettery,’” explained Nancy, “and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, my child, it’s an extremely graphic name for the trap-door, underground dungeons that they used to drop you into if you offended a king or an abbot. Monte Cristo stuff, you know. I believe this place is simply riddled with ’em.” “Ugh! Horrid people, kings and abbots!” “Ah, but they could build. Look up, honey!” Above now, far above them, rose the peaks and pinnacles of this fairy-tale place. Below them the whole island rose like a hand from the sea, joined to the mainland by only the single mile-long causeway. Ringed about the finger’s root were the far off houses, fronting the sea, backs to the land. And surmounting the whole, like a thimble atop the finger, the abbey, rising, ever rising in the still clear air to the final peak of all, the glittering image of Saint Michel de la mer du peril; of the perilous sea. The Archangel, it seemed, loved heights. From the tip of the tower that crowned his abbey, wings of gold outspread, sword uplifted, his mailed foot crushed the devil who crawled beneath, and atop one foot perched the golden cock, symbol of eternal vigilance. Cynthia, gazing skyward murmured, “Lovely!” “Marvelous!” whispered Nancy looking seaward. The sands of St. Michel, those treacherous sands through which the tide can rip and roar in minutes, seconds almost, shone far below them now, peacefully dry, almost lavender in the sun, creating a false horizon for the fringe of little houses along the shore. “Let’s get a guide,” suggested Nancy turning back. “I detest them as a rule. But this place is a perfect labyrinth, and besides you can pick up so much information the guide books don’t give you.”