Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed down. There, still more bats bung and chippered in protest as the intruders passed.
A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well toward the top of the climb, they flushed up a score of mud-swallows which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken balustrade.
At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they reached the upper platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.
Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading, testing each foot of the way before the girl. They reached the narrow platform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.
Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of this maddening mystery had laid its heavy imprint.
"Look!" he exclaimed, pointing. "What this all means we don't know yet. How long it's been we can't tell. But to judge by the appearance up here, it's even longer than I thought. See, the very tiles are cracked and crumbling.
"Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrant--but this is gone. There's grass growing in the dust that's settled between the tiles. And--why, here's a young oak that's taken root and forced a dozen slabs out of place."
"The winds and birds have carried seeds up here, and acorns," she answered in an awed voice. "Think of the time that must have passed. Years and years.
"But tell me," and her brow wrinkled with a sudden wonder, "tell me how we've ever lived so long? I can't understand it.
"Not only have we escaped starvation, but we haven't frozen to death in all these bitter winters. How can that have happened?"
"Let it all go as suspended animation till we learn the facts, if we ever do," he replied, glancing about with wonder.
"You know, of course, how toads have been known to live embedded in rock for centuries? How fish, hard-frozen, have been brought to life again? Well--"
"But we are human beings."
"I know. Certain unknown natural forces, however, might have made no more of us than of non-mammalian and less highly organized creatures.
"Don't bother your head about these problems yet a while. On my word, we've got enough to do for the present without much caring about how or why.
"All we definitely know is that some very long, undetermined period of time has passed, leaving us still alive. The rest can wait."
"How long a time do you judge it?" she anxiously inquired.
"Impossible to say at once. But it must have been something extraordinary--probably far longer than either of us suspect.