s of the Carpathians in jeopardy. But whatever his interest in
conjectures regarding the possibility of victory or defeat, his own
business was too urgent to admit of other issues, and so he made his way
forward cautiously through the underbrush, which in places was almost
impenetrable. Four-footed things, startled by this unusual invasion of
their hunting ground, started up almost beside him and fled--rabbits,
squirrels, a wolf, and a brown bear, which rocked upon its four legs
dubiously for a moment, and then lumbered comically away. These
creatures and the pathless woods advised him that however frequented the
mountain road below, the inhabitants hereabout were not in the habit of
traversing the wooded mountain sides. Moving forward slowly he climbed
the hills in the general direction of the castle, the sunlit bastions of
which suddenly appeared through the foliage above him and to the right.

He moved more warily now, for if Goritz were in hiding within Schloss
Szolnok, he would of course take pains that every avenue of approach
should be watched. But a careful inspection of the crag upon which the
castle was perched, and from this new angle, led Renwick to the
conclusion that Goritz might be so sure of its inaccessibility from the
north that no guard at the ruined end would be thought necessary. At
first glance, indeed, Renwick was inclined to that opinion himself, for
the rocks, though fissured and scarred as though by the blasts of
winter, though not so high, were scarcely less precipitous than upon the
southern side. At his very feet, perhaps already buried for years in the
loam and moss, were the huge blocks of stone which had fallen from the
northern towers and rolled down the steep slope of the natural
counterscarp which the conformation of the mountain provided.

Renwick scrutinized the beetling wall of rock above the incline with a
dubious eye, seeking a possible path or succession of footholds by means
of which he might make his way to the breach in the stone rampart above.
The task seemed hopeless, but he knew that the most formidable
difficulties are often solved by the simplest devices, and so he studied
the wall patiently, his gaze suddenly focusing upon a fissure in the
cliff, a little to his right, which went upward at an angle, its apex
passing a projection of the rock which extended for a hundred feet or
more to the southward. Above that precarious platform, the cliff was
splintered and torn as tho