"Well, Master Roy, that sounds handsome, and I like the idea of it: it's cheering-like to a man who tries to do his best. But all people don't think same as we do, and whenever we hear of a castle being attacked and defended, there were always people outside trying to make traitors of those who were in, and temptation's a nasty, cunning, 'sinuating sort of a thing. But you're castellan, and you ought to do as you please." "I will, Ben, over that, at all events. Fancy what my mother would think if I were to be making preparations for such a horror." "Hum! yes, sir. What would she think? That's a queer thing, Master Roy, isn't it, what a deal mothers have to do with how a man does, whether he's a boy or whether he's growed up?" "Why, of course they have. It is natural." "Yes, sir; I suppose it is," said the old soldier, as he went on. "You wouldn't think it, perhaps, of such a rough 'un as me, and at my time o' life, but I never quite get my old woman out of my head." "I don't see how any one could ever forget his mother," said Roy, flushing a little. "He can't, sir," said Ben, sharply; "what she taught him and said always sticks to the worst of us. The pity of it is, that we get stoopid and ashamed of it all--nay, not all, for it comes back, and does a lot of good sometimes, and--pst!--pst!--if we talk so loud we shall be waking Master Pawson. But I say, Master Roy, it won't do, really. Look at that now!" They were close to the circular crypt beneath the north-west tower, and Ben was holding up his lantern towards the curve of the arches on his left. "Roots! coming through between the stones." "Yes, sir, that's it. Only the trees her ladyship had planted, and that's the beginning of pulling this corner of the castle down. There's nothing like roots for that job. Cannon-balls'll do it, and pretty quickly too; but give a tree time, and it'll shake stone away from stone, and let the water come in, and then the frost freezes it, and soon it's all over with the strongest tower ever made. Do 'ee now ask her to have 'em cut down, and the roots burned." "I'm not going to ask anything of the sort, Ben," said Roy, shortly. "Now about this passage. You think it must run somewhere from here." "Yes, sir," replied the old soldier, as he stood now under one of the arches of the crypt and raised his lantern to open a door. "There, now we can see a bit better. If there is such a place, it starts, I suppose, from somewhere here." He walked slowly round the place, holding the lantern into the recesses, eight of which appeared between the pillars surrounding that in the centre. "But there's plenty of room here for storing sacks or anything else, and you can have doors made to those two that haven't got any, if you like." Roy walked into one of these recesses--cellar-like places of horse-shoe curve, going in a dozen feet, and then ending in a flat wall. "Which way am I looking here, Ben?" said Roy.