He saw Mellis run lightly across, and scrambling back along the wall and down the stone stairway built in the angle of the gate-house, he joined her in the courtyard. The sun hung low over the tops of the trees, and its level rays threw the blackened beams of the burned roof of the hall into grim relief. The whole place had been gutted, with the exception of the little octagonal tower to the south of the hall, and one or two outhouses lying beyond the garden. The gate-house was just a stone shell, the charred gate lying rotting in a bed of nettles. The evening light played in Mellis’s eyes, and Martin Valliant held his peace for the moment. Her lips moved as though she were repeating some promise she had made. It crossed his mind that she might wish to be alone, so he went back across the bridge and carried the two sacks and the tools over. She called to him. “Martin—Martin!” She had opened a door that led from the courtyard into the garden, and stood waiting for him. “Let us look everywhere. I want to be sure that no one has been here before us.” She wandered out into the garden, a sweet and tangled place, sloping toward the sunset. The walks had gone back to grass, and the rose bushes were smothered with brambles. The four clipped yews by the sundial had grown into shaggy trees, and the herbs in the borders lived the life of the woods. Wild flowers had taken possession, buttercups, ragged robin, purple vetches, and great white daisies. There was a nut walk that had grown into a green tunnel; and a stone seat on the terrace under the wall of the house was almost hidden by bushes that had sprung up between the stones. “This was a garden, and that was my mother’s seat. Men are very cruel.” “And yet the place is very beautiful,” he said. “With the beauty of sadness and of pain.” In one of the borders she found an old rose bush that was budding into bloom, and one red flower had opened its petals. Her eyes glimmered. “Why—this is a miracle!” She plucked the rose, kissed it, smelled its perfume. “Red is our color.” And then a thought struck her. “Comrade in arms, you are for Lancaster; here is your badge.” She gave him the rose, and Martin touched it with his lips as she passed on down the garden. They had explored the whole island before the sun dropped below the trees. The only habitable place was the tower; it had escaped the fire, probably because the wind had been blowing from the south when Roger Bland’s men had thrown their torches into the hall. A newel staircase led to an upper room, and though there was nothing but the boarded floor, the place was dry and habitable. Martin did not enter the room, but stood on the threshold, as though some finer instinct held him back. “There is plenty of old bracken in the beech wood,” he said; “it would serve—for a night.”