“And if the abbot or the king wanted you out of the way, you lived for years down there,” said Nancy. One, not far below the dining hall, was a tiny place, dark, airless, with scarcely room to lie or sit or stand upright. “Do you mean to say,” asked Cynthia, “that those people up above could dance and sing and ... and enjoy themselves with all those prisoners down below them?” The group had gone on a way; but Cynthia, lingering behind to explore, had jumped down into the oubliette to see just what kind of a place it really was. She spoke from the floor, some distance below Nancy’s neat brown oxfords. Nancy shrugged. “That’s the middle ages, darling.” Cynthia reached up. “Give me a hand, Nancy. I want to get out of here. Ugh ...” once on the floor beside the other, “I hate this place, it’s haunted by all those horrible things they used to do.” Nancy looked at her queerly. “Not see any more? All right. I’m willing,” and five minutes later they stood once more before the great western entrance looking out over the sands and the town below. “Ou ... uf!” Cynthia drew a great breath of the free air. “I’d go off my nut if we stayed in there much longer. It’s beautiful, but gosh, it was cruel. Let’s go somewhere and pick daisies and get the smell of those forgetteries out of our noses. C’mon, Nannie.” And grabbing Nancy’s wrist she hauled her headlong down the stairs towards the town below. As they raced past, Mrs. Brewster was still absorbed in her cabbages and did not even look up. The steps narrowed, they came to the block-long village with its dark, tiny windowed houses where were displayed all the usual tricks to catch the tourist trade. “Daisies!” cried Cynthia. “Where can we get daisies?” and looked about her. Steep cobbled streets, the sands ahead. “Let’s stop and get us a citronade, and I’ll ask,” suggested the diplomatic Nancy. While they sipped the sweet warmish drink from thick tumblers she chattered with the waitress. “It’s all right,” she reported. “There are pretty flowers for you to pick, my child. Oh, there’s your blonde friend’s boy friend, and all alone.” Cynthia had noticed him too, furiously striding down the steep street. Where was the buttercup girl? “They were quarreling last night,” she said, watching the nervous wiry back as it turned the lower corner of the street, entered the hotel. “And then her father came in. She didn’t seem very happy today either.” “Little Miss Fix-it,” teased Nancy. “What’s it to you? Come on now, we’ll go hunt daisies.” At the very foot of the street where, at high tide the seas must wash, where boats lay, small and deserted on the yellow sand, footprints led along the base of the cliff. Here, rounding the turn, the wind blew freshly from off the coasts of England, small crabs scuttled to shelter as they passed and far far above them Saint Michel dominated his devil and the cock eternally crowed.