Birds' -Nesting Season. 65 



projecting stone shelf a foot or two from the 

 ground, and built into the thickness of the walls 

 were four or five neatly-shaped " ambries," or store 

 cupboards. 



If the fair mother of Harold of Orkney, a second 

 Helen of Troy, who, in the days of King Stephen, 

 was carried off to Mousa by Harold Erland, was a 

 lady of as much taste as beauty, she may, with the 

 help of a few gay coloured bullock skins as sofa 

 covers and curtains to keep off the draughts, have 

 made herself very comfortable as things went in those 

 days during the long siege which the castle stood 

 before her marriage with the turbulent lover who had 

 compromised her. 



The wall to the height of the top of the chamber 

 dome is (excepting the chamber spaces) a solid heap 

 of stone, between fifteen and sixteen feet thick. A 

 little above the level of the tops of the chamber 

 domes the wall divides, and thence to the top of the 

 castle is built double in two concentric circles. In the 

 hollow between the two walls a staircase (F), or rough 

 stone path, not unlike the paved gradient by which 

 the horses reach the stables over the coach-houses of 

 Marlborough House, entered from the court by a door 

 (E and I), leads up to the top of the castle, and six 

 horizontal galleries (H) run round the building, lighted 

 by holes opening inwards (K). Each gallery ends 

 abruptly a few feet from the stairs, and all are so 

 arranged that no one could reach the top of the tower 

 without stooping and exposing himself to a knock on 

 the head from an unseen enemy at each successive 

 stage. The only break in the outside wall is at (A) 

 the entrance to the courtyard. 



Unless, as is not impossible, the walls have been 

 nipped by settlements, the Picts, or whoever else they 



