'Why, nobody knows,' the doctor answered. 'The owner did come here once,
some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this adders'
nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the
caretaker, that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters
in a lodge where the stones still hang together. There it is, see--that
grey building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.'

The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside
with a layer of boards. The wide dry thoats were black with brambles. A
hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood
within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently
blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden by
the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back turned
upon the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that
stretched away behind him.

The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and
questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring
fixed in the wall.

'And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?' he asked.

'Yes, quite alone,' replied his uncle, adding, however, the next
minute: 'Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer
girl, a regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks
death-like.'