"One would think you must ha' been in a dream, lad." "It's rare and lonely up that other long passage by oneself," hazarded Walter. "You are up at the chapel ruins and out that way in no time." "Rare and lonely!" sharply retorted the elder man, as though the words offended him. "Are you turning coward, lad?" "Not I, father," warmly rejoined Walter, perceiving that plea would not find favour. "Any way, I don't know what it was took me to go up to the chapel ruins. I went; and that seems to be all about it." "It was an unpardonable hazardous thing to do. Suppose you had been seen coming out o' the Keep at that time? And with a pistol!" "I wish the pistol had been at the bottom o' the sea, I do!" groaned the invalid. "What did you take the pistol up for?--why didn't you leave it in the usual place with the other pistols?" Walter groaned again, "I don't know." "Tell ye what, lad: but that I know you b'ain't given to drink, I should say you'd got a drop of the crew's old Hollands into you." "Janson did offer me some," said young Walter, from under the bedclothes. "And you took it! Well you must ha' been a fool. Why, your grandmother 'ud be fit to----" "I wasn't drunk: don't think that father," interrupted Walter, after a rapid mental controversy as to whether, of the two evils, it might not be better to confess to the Hollands--though, in point of fact, he had not touched a drop. "See here: it's no good talking about it, now it's done and over." "And--if you did get out by wary of the chapel ruins, what on earth made you go letting off the pistol there?" "Well, it was an accident, that was: I didn't go to let it off. That there wall in the corner knocked again' my elbow." "What took you to the corner?" "I thought I'd just give a look after the boats that were getting off," said Walter, who had spent that day as well as the night, rehearsing difficult items in his mind. "The beastly pistol went off somehow, and down I dropped." "And of all things," continued the fisherman, "to think you should ha' knocked up the Grey Sisters! It must have been Hollands." "I was bleeding to death, father. The Grey Nunnery is the nearest place." "No, it's not. Nettleby's is the nearest." "As if I should go there!" cried Walter, opening his eyes at the bare suggestion. "And as near as any is the Hutt. That's where you ought to have come on to. Why did you not? Come!" "I--I--never thought of the Hutt," said poor Walter, wondering when this ordeal would be over. "You hadn't got your head upon you: that's what it was. Wally, lad, I'd a'most rather see you drownded in the sea some rough day afore my eyes, nor see you take to drink." "'Twasn't drink, 'twas the sight of the blood," deprecatingly returned Walter. "The Grey Ladies were rare and good to me, father."