Read "Sea Mew Abbey" by Florence Warden online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Freda crossed the courtyard to one of the ruined corner-towers, and finding the staircase still practicable, continued her wanderings, with cautious steps, along the top of the broken castle-wall. She got along easily as far as the thatched roof of a big barn. But here her crutch slipped on the snow and went crashing through a tarpaulin-covered hole in the thatch, carrying its owner with it, into a loft half-filled with hay. There was no way of escape until somebody came by to rescue her. Freda therefore could do nothing but look down into the hazy light of the barn below; and presently, nursed into a comfortable warmth by the hay, she fell asleep.
She was awakened by being shaken pretty roughly, while a voice cried close to her ear: