We had read so far when Aunt Diana came out through the sally-port. “Have you seen Iris?” she asked. “The sergeant is going to show us the window through which the Coochy escaped.”
“A cat, I believe; some kind of a wild-cat,” said Aunt Diana, vaguely, as her anxious eyes scanned every inch of the moat and outworks in search of the vanished niece. At length she spied a floating blue ribbon. “There they are, back in that--in that illumined thing.”
“Oh, Aunt Di! Why, that is the demi-lune.”
“Well, whatever it is, do call Iris down directly.”
I went after the delinquents, discovering after some search the little stone stairway, nicely masked by an innocent-looking wall, where was a second stone tablet containing the two dragons, their two houses, and the supply of mutton hung up below. There on the topmost grassy stair were the two young people, and had it not been for that floating blue ribbon, there they might have remained in ambush all the morning.
“Come down,” I cried, looking up, laughingly, from the foot of the stair--“come down, Iris. Aunt Di wishes you to see the escaped cat.”
“I don’t care about cats,” pouted Iris, slowly descending. “I am glad he escaped. Let him go; I do not want to see him.”
“Iris,” began Aunt Di, “pray what has occupied you all this time?”
“The study of fortifications, aunt; you have no idea how interesting it is--that demi-lune.”
“Many persons have found it so,” observed John.
“We could not quite decide whether it was, after all, a demi-lune or a barbacan,” pursued Iris.
“Many persons have found the same difficulty; indeed, visit after visit has been necessary to decide the question, and even then it has been left unsettled,” said John, gravely.
Following Aunt Diana, we all went into a vaulted chamber lighted by a small high-up window, or rather embrasure, in the heavy stone wall.
“Through that window the distinguished Seminole chieftain Coa-coo-chee, that is for to say, the Wild-cat, made his celebrated escape by starving himself to an atomy, squirming up, and squeezing through,” announced the sergeant, who stood in front as torch-bearer.
“Then it wasn’t a cat, after all,” said Iris.
“Only in a Pickwickian sense,” said John.
“Now _I_ thought all the while it was Osceola,” said Sara, wearily.