Supper was over. It had been at the close of that meal that the explosion had taken place. She would not be called upon to meet her father again that day. Fleeing up the broken stone staircase just as his feet were heard returning from the vaulted room, she heard him bang to the door of the living room before she dared to steal into the little bare chamber where her brother slept, and where all his worldly possessions were stored. The old Gate House was a strange habitation. Formerly merely the gateway to the Castle, which had once reared its proud head upon the crest of the hill to the westward, it had but scant accommodation for a family--one living room below, flanked on one side by the kitchen, and on the other by the vaulted chamber, once possibly a guardroom, but so bitterly cold and damp now that it was never used save for such purposes as had been witnessed there that evening. A winding, broken stone stairway led upwards to a few very narrow chambers above of irregular shape, and all lighted by loophole windows deeply splayed. The lowest of these was the place where Nicholas slept, and there was a slight attempt at furniture and comfort; but the upper chambers, where Petronella and Cuthbert retired out of the way of their father's sullen and morose temper, were bare of all but actual necessities, and lacked many things which would be numbered amongst essentials in later days. The stone floors had not even a carpeting of rushes, the pallet beds lay on the hard stone floor, and only the girl possessed a basin and ewer for washing. Cuthbert was supposed to perform his ablutions in the water of the moat without, or at the pump in the yard. But Petronella had small notion of the hardness of her life. She had known no other, and only of late had she begun to realize that other girls were more gently reared and tended. Since the family had come to live at the Chase--which had only happened within the past year--her ideas had begun to enlarge; but so far this had not taught her discontent with her surroundings.