feel himself a boy again as he entered the high gorges in the cold light
after sunset. It was about the full of the moon, and in his impatience
to reach Donnaz he resolved to push on after nightfall. The forest was
still thinly-leaved, and the rustle of wind in the branches and the
noise of the torrents recalled his first approach to the castle, in the
wild winter twilight. The way lay in darkness till the moon rose, and
once or twice he took a wrong turn and found himself engaged in some
overgrown woodland track; but he soon regained the high-road, and his
servant, a young fellow of indomitable cheerfulness, took the edge off
their solitude by frequent snatches of song. At length the moon rose,
and toward midnight Odo, spurring out of a dark glen, found himself at
the opening of the valley of Donnaz. A cold radiance bathed the familiar
pastures, the houses of the village along the stream, and the turrets
and crenellations of the castle at the head of the gorge. The air was
bitter, and the horses' hoofs struck sharply on the road as they trotted
past the slumbering houses and halted at the gateway through which Odo
had first been carried as a sleepy child. It was long before the
travellers' knock was answered, but a bewildered porter at length
admitted them, and Odo cried out when he recognised in the man's face
the features of one of the lads who had taught him to play pallone in
the castle court.

Within doors all were abed; but the cavaliere was expected, and supper
laid for him in the very chamber where he had slept as a lad. The sight
of so much that was strange and yet familiar--of the old stone walls,
the banners, the flaring lamps and worn slippery stairs--all so much
barer, smaller, more dilapidated than he had remembered--stirred the
deep springs of his piety for inanimate things, and he was seized with a
fancy to snatch up a light and explore the recesses of the castle. But
he had been in the saddle since dawn, and the keen air and the long