Then when the door was opened, it seemed as though the winds had husbanded their strength behind it for one wild sortie, with such fury did they rush out to beat her back.

But she struggled in somehow, and on across the howling waste of clifftop to a little hut of stone, which formed the covering of a well.

There, as she expected, she found a rope coiled up, which was used to draw up water in an iron cup, to gratify the curiosity of visitors as much as to quench their thirst; for it was strange, indeed, to meet with fresh water there, the presence of which, no doubt, had caused the place to be chosen for a fastness in old time.

With this she hurried back; and fixing one end firmly round the door-post, she looped the other in a slip-knot, and lowered it carefully to Richard.

"Put this beneath your arms," she said; "the rope is strong and firmly fastened.