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Dotting the stretches of lagoon in every direction lie the islands now piles of airy architecture that the water seems to float under and bear upon its breast, now "Sunny spots of greenery," with the bell-towers of demolished cloisters shadowily showing above their trees; for in the days of the Republic nearly every one of the islands had its monastery and its church.
Had he been within hearing when the college bell tolled out at night, he would have run to ascertain the cause as eagerly as any schoolboy. "Locked up in the cloisters with old Ketch and the bishop!" he repeated, in amazement. "I do not understand." Mrs. Jenkins proceeded to enlighten him. She gave the explanation of the strange affair of the keys, as it had been given to her by the unlucky Joe.
On the other, the south side, of the road was an octagonal building with a high roof, not unlike the Baptistry at Florence in outline, except that it was surrounded by a lean-to that clearly made an arcade or cloisters to it: it also was most delicately ornamented.
It wasn't till she had come quite close that he produced for her his "Gloucester, Gloucester, Gloucester," and his "Look at it over there!" She knew just where to look. "Yes isn't it one of the best? There are cloisters or towers or some thing." And her eyes, which, though her lips smiled, were almost grave with their depths of acceptance; came back to him. "Or the tomb of some old king."
Much of the cloisters indeed was standing, and there the stone pavement remained; but the square of the cloisters was all turfed, and in the middle of it stood a large modern stone vase, out of the broad basin of which hung flowering creepers and green tendrils. As Lady Glencora drove up to the door, a gentleman, who had heard the sound of the wheels, came forth to meet them.
Were I, after walking along the dim cloisters, and passing through the antechapel, faintly illuminated by a solitary lamp, suddenly to enter this hall at midnight, when the convocation is assembled, and the synod of venerable fathers, all in solemn order, surrounding the successor of Bruno, it would be a long while, I believe, before I could recover from the surprise of so august a spectacle.
I should apologize for intruding upon the reader these somewhat trite reflections; which were set going by the quaint stock-in-trade of the wig-maker's shop in the cloisters of the Inner Temple, whither I strayed on a sultry afternoon in quest of shade and quiet.
The meeting with the college boys at their stealthy post in the cloisters, when he and Hamish were passing through at dusk, a few nights before, coupled with the hints then thrown out of the "serving out" of Ketch, could leave little doubt as to the culprits. Arthur returned an answer, couched in general terms. "Could it have been the college boys, think you?" debated Mr. Galloway.
The walls, which were crumbling away here and there, and which were covered with dark ivy; the round towers, which harbored jackdaws, owls, and hawks; the Æolian harp, which complained and sighed and wept in the wind; the stones in the castle yard, which were overgrown with grass; the cloisters, in which every footstep re-echoed; the great ancestral portraits which hung on the walls, coated as it were with dark, mysterious veils by the centuries which had passed over them all this recalled to him the legends and fairy tales of his youth, and he involuntarily thought of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and of Blue Beard, of the cruel mistress of the Kynast, and that aristocratic tigress of the Carpathians, who obtained the unfading charms of eternal youth by bathing in human blood.
No other boys were within hearing; though many were within sight; for they were assembling in and round the cloisters after their dinner. "Now, Miss Charley, it's the last time I'll ask you, as true as that we are living here! You are as obstinate as a young mule. I'll give you this one chance, and I'll not give you another. I'd advise you to take it, if you have any regard for your skin."
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