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turrets. The stairway crept ambitiously upward, winding around and around until the high room at the top was reached.
    With delighted surprise, she found that the high circular room with its magnificent panoramic view of the moonlit ocean, was, in fact, a sculptor's studio. A well-used artist's table showed the signs of hours of dedicated work. Long, low shelving showed some of the products in various stages of completion. Hillary was awed by the beauty of the work. From lumps of heavy gray clay, the artist's hands had brought forth so much beauty-intricate and realistic statues of the woodland creatures that scurried through the pines along the coast, graceful, flowing abstracts that seemed to hover in their places on the shelves. Truly beautiful.
    But the room showed no sign of current occupation, she realized with a closer inspection. A fine mist of dust coated the table and shelves. The remaining clay in its barrel by the doorway was hardened and cracked. As if the artist had been prevented from returning to this haven of creativity. Scotty?
    Hillary felt a tinge of excitement at the thought. Had Scotty been the artist who had created with such talent? Had her stroke prevented her from going on? It seemed right somehow, for someone like Scotty to be the recipient of such an artistic gift. And if the work had stopped because of her physical disabilities, it was very possible that she would begin one day again. Hillary's mind was turning as she left the turret behind.
    She wandered slowly through the rear quarters of the castle, meandering through the sometimes darkened rooms with her thoughts fixed elsewhere. So many rooms!
    It seemed a pity to have them standing empty and unused. She found the second turret approximately where she had expected it to be, symmetrically even with the first tower on the opposite side of the castle. She opened the door soundlessly and crept up the darkened stairs. She turned on the lightswitch, but the beam that was thrown on the steps was a weak one. Up and up she went, curious as to what this turret held.
    And when she found out, she was almost as surprised as she had been when she had discovered the first turret room, though certainly not as pleasantly so.
    In the dim light, she could see shapes lining the curved walls of stone and glass. The windows were bare, but the night was dark outside, and so no additional moonlight filtered in through the glass to aid her straining eyes.
    Was the room full of people? She gulped in fear, ready to start and tear down the winding stairway behind her. But her pulse slowly returned to normal as she stared more deeply into the shadows.
    Armor! The room was lined with several full suits of ancient armor, standing tall and proud in their darkened corner of the castle, almost as if they possessed souls of their own. In style, each differed greatly. Some were solid and ornate, others covered with chain mail. She passed the beam of her flashlight over each and noticed the gleam that reflected off their surfaces. The relics stood here, high in the castle turret, in the most deserted wing of the entire building, a building empty except for an ailing old woman and a few overworked servants.
    But the armor was far from neglected. Obviously, it was well taken care of. And who was responsible for that painstaking effort? It made no sense.
    And then she heard it.
    At first, she had supposed that the slight noise she had picked up had come from Percival, following her at a distance. But the sound was repeated, again and again. Someone was walking through the corridor at the bottom of the turret steps. Someone's definite footsteps were echoing soundly on the stone floor, and getting clearer and closer with each step.
    She stood petrified. Who was it?
    She crossed the turret room instinctively to one of the tallest suits of armor. As forbidding as it had appeared only seconds before, it suddenly became a haven, a protector. She darted behind it, hiding. For the footsteps