The ancient dining-hall, however, was quite large enough for all its present purposes and could have accommodated a good-sized household with ease. The old carved black oak dining-table was lost in the vastness of the apartment. Suits of armor were ranged along the walls at intervals, and Billie was amazed to find that one or two of them were not a whit taller than she was herself. From a gallery running around two sides of the hall hung several faded battle flags. There were a few portraits on the walls of dark-haired, rather fierce-looking knights and their beguiling ladies, also dark-haired with gentle blue eyes. The only modern object in the entire room was a grand piano at the far end under a stained glass window.
“Beatrice, do we sleep in cells?” demanded Mary Price.
“Yes,” answered the English girl. “There are dozens of them opening on the galleries. They are just as they were centuries ago, rather small for sleeping-rooms, but, as Uncle says, it’s quite like camping out to come up here for a visit; and the cells are much larger than tents.”
“People claim to have seen things,” she said, “but I never did. Almost every castle in Ireland has its banshee, you know, but it only appears before a death in the family.”
“And what is the banshee of Castle Abbey?” the four girls asked in an excited chorus.
“Now, if I tell you,” exclaimed Beatrice, her blue eyes twinkling with fun, “you will be afraid to go to bed alone, and you know there is only one bed to a cell and it’s a very small bed indeed!”
“Well,” said Beatrice, “the banshee of Castle Abbey isn’t anybody at all. It’s a noise——”
“It’s a bell and it rings to announce an approaching death in the family.”
“It is in the belfry of the old tower. But there is simply no way to climb to the top if anybody wanted to. No one can remember when steps have been there.”
“No, indeed, and I hope I never shall, but the night Grandpapa died in London, old Michael, the gardener, claims to have heard it ring out three times.”
It all sounded very remote and interesting to the four young Americans, who had been brought up in a place that did not antedate a hundred years, and still had once seemed old enough to them.
“Why don’t they take down the bell?” asked Mary.