them. How many more of these there might be, or how much loftier, no one
could tell. Nor could the foundations of the castle in the rock on which
it was built be determined with the smallest approach to precision. Those
of the family who had given themselves to exploring in that direction,
found such a labyrinth of vaults and passages, and endless successions of
down-going stairs, out of one underground space into a yet lower, that
they came to the conclusion that at least the whole mountain was
perforated and honeycombed in this fashion. They had a dim consciousness,
too, of the presence, in those awful regions, of beings whom they could
not comprehend. Once they came upon the brink of a great black gulf, in
which the eye could see nothing but darkness: they recoiled with horror;
for the conviction flashed upon them that that gulf went down into the
very central spaces of the earth, of which they had hitherto been
wandering only in the upper crust; nay, that the seething blackness before
them had relations mysterious, and beyond human comprehension, with the
far-off voids of space, into which the stars dare not enter.

"At the foot of the cliff whereon the castle stood, lay a deep lake,
inaccessible save by a few avenues, being surrounded on all sides with
precipices which made the water look very black, although it was pure as
the night-sky. From a door in the castle, which was not to be otherwise
entered, a broad flight of steps, cut in the rock, went down to the lake,
and disappeared below its surface. Some thought the steps went to the very
bottom of the water.

"Now in this castle there dwelt a large family of brothers and sisters.
They had never seen their father or mother. The younger had been educated
by the elder, and these by an unseen care and ministration, about the
sources of which they had, somehow or other, troubled themselves very
little--for what people are accustomed to, they regard as coming from