PAGE 6
The Tower Of Mystery
by
Alice whispered to Oswald that we should be late for tea, and wouldn’t it be better to go back now directly. But he said:
“If you’re afraid, say so; and you needn’t come in anyway–but I’m going on.”
The man who was going for the pig put us down at a gate quite near the tower–at least it looked so until we began to walk again. We thanked him, and he said:
“Quite welcome,” and drove off.
We were rather quiet going through the wood. What we had heard made us very anxious to see the tower–all except Alice, who would keep talking about tea, though not a greedy girl by nature. None of the others encouraged her, but Oswald thought himself that we had better be home before dark.
As we went up the path through the wood we saw a poor wayfarer with dusty bare feet sitting on the bank.
He stopped us and said he was a sailor, and asked for a trifle to help him to get back to his ship.
I did not like the look of him much myself, but Alice said, “Oh, the poor man, do let’s help him, Oswald.” So we held a hurried council, and decided to give him the milk sixpence. Oswald had it in his purse, and he had to empty the purse into his hand to find the sixpence, for that was not all the money he had, by any means. Noel said afterwards that he saw the wayfarer’s eyes fastened greedily upon the shining pieces as Oswald returned them to his purse. Oswald has to own that he purposely let the man see that he had more money, so that the man might not feel shy about accepting so large a sum as sixpence.
The man blessed our kind hearts and we went on.
The sun was shining very brightly, and the Tower of Mystery did not look at all like a tomb when we got to it. The bottom story was on arches, all open, and ferns and things grew underneath. There was a round stone stair going up in the middle. Alice began to gather ferns while we went up, but when we had called out to her that it was as the pig-man had said, and daylight all the way up, she said:
“All right. I’m not afraid. I’m only afraid of being late home,” and came up after us. And perhaps, though not downright manly truthfulness, this was as much as you could expect from a girl.
There were holes in the little tower of the staircase to let light in. At the top of it was a thick door with iron bolts. We shot these back, and it was not fear but caution that made Oswald push open the door so very slowly and carefully.
Because, of course, a stray dog or cat might have got shut up there by accident, and it would have startled Alice very much if it had jumped out on us.
When the door was opened we saw that there was no such thing. It was a room with eight sides. Denny says it is the shape called octagenarian; because a man named Octagius invented it. There were eight large arched windows with no glass, only stone-work, like in churches. The room was full of sunshine, and you could see the blue sky through the windows, but nothing else, because they were so high up. It was so bright we began to think the pig-man had been kidding us. Under one of the windows was a door. We went through, and there was a little passage and then a turret-twisting stair, like in the church, but quite light with windows. When we had gone some way up this, we came to a sort of landing, and there was a block of stone let into the wall–polished–Denny said it was Aberdeen graphite, with gold letters cut in it. It said:
"Here lies the body of Mr. Richard Ravenal.
Born 1720. Died 1779."