land farther down, and that I might then recapture him. When,
however, I had reached the opposite bank, and stood under the shadow
of the chateau, I discovered that the cowardly beast had turned back,
and, having scrambled out, was now trotting away along the path by
which we had come. Having no mind to go after him, I resigned myself
to the loss, and turned my attention to the mansion now before me.

Some two hundred yards from the river it raised its great square
bulk against the background of black, star-flecked sky. From the
facade before me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came
a flight of half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble,
ending in square, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What
moon there was revealed the quaint architecture of that stately
edifice and glittered upon the mullioned windows. But within nothing
stirred; no yellow glimmer came to clash with the white purity of
the moonlight; no sound of man or beast broke the stillness of the
night, for all that the hour was early. The air of the place was
as that of some gigantic sepulchre. A little daunted by this
all-enveloping stillness, I skirted the terraces and approached
the house on the eastern side. Here I found an old-world drawbridge
--now naturally in disuse - spanning a ditch fed from the main
river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the bridge,
and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the same
silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that
overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to proceed, and I leaned
against a buttress of the portcullis, what time I considered.

I was weak from fasting, worn with hard riding, and faint from the
wound in my shoulder, which had been the cause at least of my
losing some blood. In addition to all this, I was shivering with