astonishment an enormous castle, ruined and open to the sky. There are
many such ruins famous in Europe, but of this one I had never even
heard. I went lonely under the evening and looked at its main gate and
saw on it a moulded escutcheon, carved, and the motto in French,
"Henceforward," which word made me think a great deal, but resolved no
problem in my mind.

I went on again westward as the darkness fell and saw what I had not
seen before, though my reading had told me of its existence, a long line
of trees marking a ridge on the horizon, which line was the border of
that ancient road the Roman soldiers built leading from the west into
Amiens. "Along that road," thought I, "St. Martin rode before he became
a monk, and while he was yet a soldier and was serving under Julian the
Apostate. Along that road he came to the west gate of Amiens and there
cut his cloak in two and gave the half of it to a beggar."

The memory of St. Martin's deed entertained me for some miles of my way,
and I remembered how, when I was a child, it had seemed to me ridiculous
to cut your coat in two whether for a beggar or for anybody else. Not
that I thought charity ridiculous--God forbid!--but that a coat seemed
to me a thing you could not cut in two with any profit to the user of
either half. You might cut it in latitude and turn it into an Eton
jacket and a kilt, neither of much use to a Gallo-Roman beggar. Or you
might cut it in meridian and leave but one sleeve: mere folly.

Considering these things, I went on over the rolling plateau. I saw a
great owl flying before me against the sky, different from the owls of
home. I saw Jupiter shining above a cloud and Venus shining below one.
The long light lingered in the north above the English sea. At last I
came quite unexpectedly upon that delight and plaything of the French: a