St. George and St. Michael. Volume II

Ere the next day was over, it was understood throughout the castle / that lord Herbert was constructing a horoscope -- not that there were / many in the place who understood what a horoscope really was, or had / any knowledge of the modes of that astrology in whose results they / firmly believed; yet Kaltoff having been seen carrying several / mysterious-looking instruments to the top of the library tower, the / word was presently in everybody's mouth. Nor were the lovers of / marvel likely to be disappointed, for no sooner was the sun down / than there was lord Herbert, his head in an outlandish Persian hat, / visible over the parapet from the stone-court, while from some of / the higher windows in the grass-court might be seen through a / battlement his long flowing gown of a golden tint, wrought with / hieroglyphics in blue. Now he would stand for a while gazing up into / the heavens, now would be shifting and adjusting this or that / instrument, then peering along or through it, and then re-arranging / it, or kneeling and drawing lines, now circular, now straight, upon / a sheet of paper spread flat on the roof of the tower. There he / still was when the household retired to rest, and there, in the grey / dawn, his wife, waking up and peeping from her window, saw him / still, against the cold sky, pacing the roof with bent head and / thoughtful demeanour. In the morning he was gone, and no one but / lady Margaret saw him during the whole of the following day.

Nor indeed could any but herself or Caspar have found him, for the tale / Tom Fool told the rustics of a magically concealed armoury had been / suggested by a rumour current in the house, believed by all without / any proof, and yet not the less a fact, that lord Herbert had a / chamber of which none of the domestics knew door or window, or even / the locality. That recourse should have been had to spells and / incantations for its concealment, however, as was also commonly / accepted, would have seemed trouble unnecessary to any one who knew / the mechanical means his lordship had employed for the purpose. The / touch of a pin on a certain spot in one of the bookcases in the / library, admitted him to a wooden stair which, with the aid of / Caspar, he had constructed in an ancient disused chimney, and which / led down to a small chamber in the roof of a sort of porch built / over the stair from the stone-court to the stables. There was no / other access to it, and the place had never been used, nor had any / window but one which they had constructed in the roof so cunningly / as to attract no notice. All the household supposed the hidden / chamber, whose existence was unquestioned, to be in the great tower, / somewhere near the workshop.