s question thrilled through me
like a lightning-flash, so before I was able to make any reply he
continued, "It was Heaven's will that your entrance into that castle
should be signalised by memorable circumstances, and that you should
become involved against your own will in the deepest secrets of the
house. The time has now come when you must learn all. We have often
enough talked about things which you, cousin, rather dimly guessed at
than really understood. In the alternation of the seasons nature
represents symbolically the cycle of human life. That is a trite
remark; but I interpret it differently from everybody else. The dews of
spring fall, summer's vapours fade away, and it is the pure atmosphere
of autumn which clearly reveals the distant landscape, and then finally
earthly existence is swallowed in the night of winter. I mean that the
government of the Power Inscrutable is more plainly revealed in the
clear-sightedness of old age. It is granted glimpses of the promised
land, the pilgrimage to which begins with the death on earth. How
clearly do I see at this moment the dark destiny of that house, to
which I am knit by firmer ties than blood relationship can weave!
Everything lies disclosed to the eyes of my spirit. And yet the things
which I now see, in the form in which I see them--the essential
substance of them, that is--this I cannot tell you in words; for no
man's tongue is able to do so. But listen, my son, I will tell you
as well as I am able, and do you think it is some remarkable story
that might really happen; and lay up carefully in your soul the
knowledge that the mysterious relations into which you ventured to
enter, not perhaps without being summoned, might have ended in your
destruction--but--that's all over now."

The history of the R---- entail, which my old uncle told me, I retain
so faithfully in my memory even now that I can almost repeat it in his
own words (he spoke of himself in the third person).

One stormy night in the autumn of 1760 the servants of R--sitten were
startled out of the midst of their sleep by a terrific crash, as if the
whole of the spacious castle had tumbled into a thousand pieces. In a
moment everybody was on his legs; lights were lit; the house-steward,
his face deadly pale with fright and terror, came up panting with his
keys; but as they proceeded through the passages and halls and rooms,
suite after suite, and found all safe, and heard in the appalling
silence