Castle Warlock Author:George MacDonald Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE DEAWING-EOOM. As soon as they were out of the kitchen, the boy pushed his hand into his father's; the father's grasped the boy's, and with... more »out a word spoken, they walked on. They would often be half a day together without a word passing between them. To be near, each to the other, was for the time enough. Cosmo had thought his father was going somewhere about the farm, but instead of crossing to the other side of the court where stood the sheds and stables, etc., or leaving it by the gate on the right, the laird turned to the left, and led the way to a door at the farther end of the next block. It was a heavy oak door, studded with great broad iron knobsarranged in lozenge pattern, and set deep in the thick wall. There had been a second, doubtless still stronger, flush with the external surface, for the great hooks of the hinges remained, with the bolt-hole in the stone on the opposite side. Except Grizzie to open and shut windows and attend to Cosmo's room, and Cosmo to go to it, seldom any one entered the place. The door opened into a narrow passage, no wider than itself. Off this passage to the left was a good-sized hall with a huge fireplace. It had a great oak table at which had often feasted a jubilant company, and very little furniture besides. The walls were of bare plaster, and stained with damp. Against them were fixed a few mouldering heads of wild animals—the stag and the fox and the otter—also one ancient wolf's-head. But it was not into this room the laird led his son. The passage ended in a spiral stone stair. It was much worn, and had so little head-room that the laird could notascend without stooping. Cosmo was short enough as yet to go erect, but it gave him always a feeling of imprisonment and choking, a brief agony of the imaginat...« less