Not that Tom Dance, wise in his nearly fifty years, took it all in unquestioningly. There was something about the story, and about Wally's voice and face and shifting eyes when he told it, that rather puzzled him: in short, that created somewhat of a doubt: but the very impossibility (as he looked upon it) of the injuries having occurred in any other way served to dispel suspicion. The idea that there was a secret passage from the Friar's Keep to the Grey Nunnery could no more have entered into Tom Dance's imagination, than that there was a passage to the moon. When the indoor hubbub and bustle of the removal of Walter home from the Grey Nunnery was over, and the numerous friends, admitted one at a time to see him, had gone again, and Walter had had some refreshing sleep towards sunset, then Tom Dance thought the time and opportunity had come to have a talk with him. The old grandmother, Dame Dance--who lived in her solitary abode under the cliff at some distance, and whose house at high water was not accessible except by boat--had come up to nurse and tend him, bringing her white apron and a nightcap. But Tom Dance sent his mother home again. He was a good son, and he told her that she should not have the trouble: he and Sarah could attend to Wally without further help. Sarah was his daughter, Walter's sister, and several years older than the young man. She was a cripple, poor thing, but very useful in the house; a shy, silent young woman, who could only walk with crutches; so that Greylands scarcely saw her out of doors from year's end to year's end. Now and then, on some fine Sunday she would contrive to get to church, but that was all. Tom Dance's house was the last in the village and next the beach, its side windows facing the sea. It was twilight, but there was no candle in Walter's room yet, and as Tom Dance sat down at the window, he saw the stars coming out over the grey waters, one by one, and heard the murmuring of the waves. "D'ye feel that ye could peck a bit, Wally?" asked he, turning his head sideways towards the bed. "Sarah's gone to make me some arrowroot, father." "That's poor stuff, lad." "It's what Dr. Parker said I was to have." "Look here, Wally," continued Tom, after a pease, during which he had seemed to be looking out to sea again, "I can't make out what should have taken you up on to the chapel ruins. Why didn't you follow us to the Hutt?" To account feasibly for this one particular item in the tale, was Walter's chief difficulty. He knew that: and while his father was entering upon it in the morning, had felt truly thankful that they were interrupted. "I don't know what took me," replied Walter, with a sort of semi-wonder in his own voice, as though the fact were just as much of a puzzle to himself as it could be to his father. "I stayed behind to lock up: and the rest of you had all gone on to the Hutt ever so long: and--and so I went up and out by the chapel ruins."