ld be advisable, should a path be
found, to venture to an edifice, which might possibly harbour banditti.
They considered, that their own party was not small, and that several of
them were well armed; and, after enumerating the dangers, to be incurred
by passing the night in the open wild, exposed, perhaps, to the effects
of a thunder-storm, there remained not a doubt, that they ought to
endeavour to obtain admittance to the edifice above, at any hazard
respecting the inhabitants it might harbour; but the darkness, and the
dead silence, that surrounded it, appeared to contradict the probability
of its being inhabited at all.

A shout from the guides aroused their attention, after which, in a few
minutes, one of the Count's servants returned with intelligence, that a
path was found, and they immediately hastened to join the guides, when
they all ascended a little winding way cut in the rock among thickets
of dwarf wood, and, after much toil and some danger, reached the summit,
where several ruined towers, surrounded by a massy wall, rose to their
view, partially illumined by the moon-light. The space around the
building was silent, and apparently forsaken, but the Count was
cautious; 'Step softly,' said he, in a low voice, 'while we reconnoitre
the edifice.'

Having proceeded silently along for some paces, they stopped at a
gate, whose portals were terrible even in ruins, and, after a moment's
hesitation, passed on to the court of entrance, but paused again at the
head of a terrace, which, branching from it, ran along the brow of a
precipice. Over this, rose the main body of the edifice, which was now
seen to be, not a watch-tower, but one of those ancient fortresses,
that, from age and neglect, had fallen to decay. Many parts of it,
however, appeared to be still entire; it was built of grey stone, in
the heavy Saxon-gothic style, with enormous round towers, buttresses of
proportionable strength, and the arch of the large gate, which seemed
to open into the hall of the fabric, was round, as was that of a window
above. The air of solemnity, which must so strongly have characterized
the pile even in the days of its early strength, was now considerably
heightened by its shattered battlements and half-demolished walls, and
by the huge masses of ruin, scattered in its wide area, now silent and
grass grown. In this court of entrance stood the gigantic remains of an
oak, that seemed to have flourished and decayed with the buil