But while she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which led to an open trap-door.

Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in the hot bright sunlight.

A large shutter was open in the sloping roof, the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting light and air.

Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope of thick thatched roof.

Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle round the sundial.
Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man.
There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy attitude--the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so appealing to pity.