The children clung together tighter than ever and held their breath, for there certainly was the most extraordinary noise to be heard--a kind of mixture between groaning and sighing, with a rattling sound as of dragging chains. It seemed coming in their direction, too, and they shrank into a niche in the wall, with their hair almost standing on end. Something gleamed white in the faint moonlight, and a terrific sound suddenly boomed in their ears. Frightened almost out of their wits, the children shrieked and ran, but stopped before they had gone twenty yards, for the noise had developed into a very decided 'Hee-haw!' and the moon, bursting through the clouds, revealed the long nose and twirling ears of the tinker's broken-winded old donkey, who, dragging a clog on his leg, was giving vent to his feelings in his own peculiar fashion, his master having turned him into the ruins for a stolen feed during the night, no doubt with the intention of fetching him in the morning before anyone was up and about. It was such bathos after the overwrought state of their feelings that they sat down and laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks, treasuring the joke to tell to Archie when he should be well enough to receive visitors, and holding it up as a model to relieve Nancy's fears.