Simon Pinniger picked up the pewter plate and marched off swinging the lantern. From the kitchen a passage led to what had been the hall, now rafterless, with the stars blinking between ivied walls. A flight of steps led to a door that opened into the lower story of the tower. Simon put the lantern down, pulled out a key, and, unlocking the door, picked up the lantern again and began to climb the interminable stair. Thud, thud, thud, up into the darkness, with the light from the lantern swinging this way and that, and the raw cold of the autumn night breathing in at the open squints, and through the shot-holes that could be seen here and there in the walls. Simon Pinniger climbed sixty steps or so, passing two narrow landings before he came to a door with a bar across it. He put down the lantern, unlocked the door, lifted the bar that worked upon a pin, and, opening the door about a foot, pushed the plate in with the toe of his boot. “Supper,” was all he said. Then, after the turning of the lock and the creaking of the bar, the thud, thud died down again into the darkness of the stair. Only one thing moved for the moment in the tower-room, and that a mouse, who came out boldly to nibble at the bread on the pewter plate. A single window, high up in the wall and closed with stanchions, let in the brown gloom of the dusk and the glitter of a star. There was no fire, no furniture to speak of, and nothing that could be broken and used as an edge to cut and wound. In one corner stood a truckle-bed, and sitting thereon a still, shadowy figure whose face showed a gray oval in the darkness. The place seemed far above all sound, though the wind might moan there and shake the ivy on the wall. The figure rose from the bed and moved toward the door. It went on its knees there, and with cold hands began to crumble some of the rough bread. A tiny shadow crept up toward the white fingers and took crumbs. It was so little a thing, too small to be caressed, yet it had grown tame in one short month, and, above all, it was alive. Barbara, kneeling there, fed the mouse with crumbs, and ate some mouthfuls of the bread herself. For there was nothing for her to do at Thorn but to watch for this friend at dusk, or for the white pigeons that sometimes flew up to her window during the day. She could see nothing of the world, not even the waving woods, but only the clouds moving and a few stars at night. One book they had given her, and that an old Bible bound in faded red leather. She had read it twice from cover to cover, sometimes with listlessness, sometimes with fierce hunger, sometimes with tears. And for an hour or more she would sit on the bed and think, her white face thin and questioning, but with no madness in her eyes. XXIV