Two more steps remained. Two more desperate efforts, while she fought the hideous temptation to look downwards. For an instant she almost lost all knowledge of what she was doing. Guided only by instinct--the instinct of self-preservation--her eyes still straining painfully in that enforced upward gaze, she at last reached the door. With a strangled sob of relief she knelt up against it and inserted the big iron key, with numbed fingers turning it in the lock. The heavy door opened, and Nan clung to it with both hands till it had swung back sufficiently to admit her. Then, from the security of the castle itself, she pushed it to and locked it on the inside, as the old woman at the cottage had bidden her, thrusting the key into the pocket of her sports coat. She was safe! Around her were the walls of the ancient castle--walls that seemed almost part of the solid rock itself standing betwixt her and that horrible abyss below! . . . Her limbs gave way suddenly and she toppled over in a dead faint, lying in a little crumpled heap at the foot of the wall. It was very quiet up there within King Arthur's Castle. The tourists who, mayhap, had visited it earlier in the day were gone; no one would come again to-night to disturb the supreme stillness. The wan cry of the gulls drifted eerily across the sea. Once an enquiring sheep approached the slim young body lying there, stirless and inert, and sniffed at it, then moved away again and lay down to chew the cud. The golden disc of the sun dropped steadily lower in the sky. . . . * * * * * * "Nan's very late." Mrs. Seymour made the statement rather blankly. Dinner had been announced and the house-party were gathered together in the hall round the great hearth fire. The summer day had chilled to a cool evening, as so often happens by the sea, and the ruddy flames diffused a cheery glow of warmth. "Perhaps Lady Gertrude is keeping her to dinner," said Lord St. John. "It's very probable." As he spoke he held out his hands to the fire--withered old hands that looked somehow frailer than their wont. Kitty shook her head. "No. She--I don't think she enjoyed her visit overmuch, and, when she came back she went out cycling--to 'work it off,'" she said. "Where did she go?" inquired Penelope. "To Tintagel. I told her she wouldn't have time enough to get there and back before dinner. Never mind. We'll begin, and I'll order something to be kept hot for her." Accordingly they all adjourned to the dining-room and dinner proceeded in its usual leisurely fashion, although the gay chatter that generally accompanied it was absent. Everyone seemed conscious of a certain uneasiness. "I wish young Nan would come back," remarked Barry at last, looking up abruptly from the fish he was dissecting. A shade of anxiety clouded his lazy blue eyes. "I hope she's not come a cropper down one of these confounded hills."