er had not been here for ages, might, with some degree of
certainty, be surmised; but some sort of castellan or game-keeper might
be there, and from him, I hoped to hear some tidings of my friend and
his welfare, and at least to spend a night in a home which he had loved
with all his heart.

I took one of these downward paths at a venture, and soon plunged into
the strangest, darkest night of wood that ever stirred above a
wanderer's head.

And in the night come dreams;--and these soon wove a spell about me,
and I quite forgot whence I had come, and whither I was going, and
blindly left my legs to guide me, as they stepped uniformly on, until
they came to an involuntary halt, at a broad stream, where not a trace
of path could be discerned; the trees stood thick, interlacing their
branches with the brushwood, and forming an impenetrable barrier. I
immediately turned back, and walked steadily upwards, until a path to
the right again seduced me; then I tried another downwards, went astray
again, and so went wandering on for hours, making the whole round of
the valley, without catching a single glimpse of the castle peeping
through the thickets. The moon was already shining upon the tree tops,
and I made up my mind to pass the night in the airiest of lodgings.

Suddenly, when I least expected it, the brushwood opened, and there,
like an island in the midst of a lake of verdure, the old grey building
stood square before me, with countless glassless windows, but without
one trace of human habitation. A broad stone-bridge across the dried-up
moat, reached right into the dark court, from which the three square
wings of the building rose ponderous and unadorned. Not a balcony, nor
jutting window, was there to relieve the stern monotony of the walls;
nothing but a gigantic coat of arms hewn in stone above the gateway, in
which I recognised the bearings of a well-remembered signet ring.

Nearer to the roof, the castle wore a gayer aspect the copper-plates
about the gables shone mildly in the moonbeams, and the numerous
chimney tops with weathercocks and flagstaffs, seemed all spangled over
with silver. Nowhere a light; nor a window opened to the evening air;
even the smoke I had seen upon the roof was gone.

As I stood upon the bridge, and looked upon the rank vegetation, which,
struggling upwards, was choking up the moat; and then at the forest
pressing onwards to the very threshold of the castle, the thought would
force its