"The boot you gave me fits them too well to admit of doubt, I'm afraid," said Gimblet. And as the other made a half-gesture of despair, "You must give me more time," he said; "I may find some clue in the course of the next two or three days. By the by, is your cousin a short man?" "No," said Mark, "he's about my height. Why do you ask?" "Oh, I had an idea," said Gimblet evasively. "But if he's as tall as you, I had better begin again. I think I'll take a little stroll through the grounds," he added, "and then back to Lady Ruth Worsfold's house, and get a bath and a change." "I shall see you at dinner-time," said Ashiel. "I am dining at the cottage. Au revoir till then." Gimblet went out of the front door, and proceeded to make a tour of the Castle buildings. Turning to his left round the front of the house, he passed the gun-room door, and went down a short path, which led to the level of the servants' quarters. These were built on the slope of the hill, so that what was a basement in the front of the house was level with the ground at the back. Here more remains of the old fortress were to be seen. The various outbuildings that straggled down towards the loch had all once formed part of old block-houses or outlying towers; and, as the path descended farther down the hill, the detective found himself walking round the precipitous rock from which the single great tower still standing--the one in whose massive shell the room had been cut which was now the library--dominated the scene from every side. It had been built at the very edge of the hill which here fell almost sheer to the level of the lake, and the old McConachans had no doubt chosen their site for its unscalable position. Indeed, the place must always have been impregnable from that side, the rock offering no foothold to a goat till within twenty feet of the base of the tower, where the surface was broken and uneven, and had, in places, been built up with solid masonry. In the crevices up there, seeds had germinated and grown to tall plants and bushes. Ivy hung about the face of the escarpment like a scarf, and in one place a good-sized tree, a beech, had established itself firmly upon a ledge and leant forward over the path below in a manner that turned the beholder giddy. Its great roots had not been able to grow to their full girth within the cracks and crannies of the rocks; some of them had pushed their way in through the gaps in the masonry, and the others curled and twisted in mid air, twining and interlacing in an outspread canopy. Beyond the tower ran the battlemented wall of the enclosed garden, its foundations draped in the thrifty vegetation of the rocks.