When cautiously he poked
up his head, there was the huge mass of the keep towering blank
above him! On a level with his eyes, the broad, lilied waters of the
moat lay betwixt him and the citadel.
Marquis had brought him to the one neglected, therefore forgotten,
and thence undefended spot of the whole building. Before the well
was sunk in the keep, the supply of water to the moat had been far
more bountiful, and provision for a free overflow was necessary. For
some reason, probably for the mere sake of facility in the
construction, the passage for the superfluous water had been made
larger than needful at the end next the moat. About midway to its
outlet, however--a mere drain-mouth in a swampy hollow in the middle
of a field--it had narrowed to a third of the compass. But the
quarriers had cut across it above the point of contraction; and no
danger of access occurring to lord Herbert or Mr. Salisbury, while
they found a certain service in the tiny waterfall, they had left it
as it was.
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