Donatello sighed again, and led the way up into the tower.

Mounting the broad staircase that ascended from the entrance hall,
they traversed the great wilderness of a house, through some obscure
passages, and came to a low, ancient doorway. It admitted them to a
narrow turret stair which zigzagged upward, lighted in its progress by
loopholes and iron-barred windows. Reaching the top of the first flight,
the Count threw open a door of worm-eaten oak, and disclosed a chamber
that occupied the whole area of the tower. It was most pitiably forlorn
of aspect, with a brick-paved floor, bare holes through the massive
walls, grated with iron, instead of windows, and for furniture an
old stool, which increased the dreariness of the place tenfold, by
suggesting an idea of its having once been tenanted.

"This was a prisoner's cell in the old days," said Donatello; "the
white-bearded necromancer, of whom I told you, found out that a certain
famous monk was confined here, about five hundred years ago. He was a
very holy man, and was afterwards burned at the stake in the Grand-ducal
Square at Firenze. There have always been stories, Tomaso says, of
a hooded monk creeping up and down these stairs, or standing in the
doorway of this chamber. It must needs be the ghost of the ancient
prisoner. Do you believe in ghosts?"

"I can hardly tell," replied Kenyon; "on the whole, I think not."

"Neither do I," responded the Count; "for, if spirits ever come back,
I should surely have met one within these two months past. Ghosts never
rise! So much I know, and am glad to know it!"