t places to be shut up in cannot well be
imagined. The guards used to walk up and down in front of the aperture
through which food was passed to the unfortunate and damp monarch.

Later Aalholm came into Count Raben's family (in the eighteenth
century). There are, of course, all sorts of legends and ghostly
stories which, as in all ancient castles, are, with the family specter,
absolutely necessary. Women in gauzy drapery have been seen roaming
about in dark corridors, horses have been heard rattling their chains
in the courtyard. Mirrors also do something, but I forget what.
However, no phantoms, I believe, have been noticed during this
generation; probably the building which is going on now has discouraged
them on their prowling tours and routed them from their lairs. I have
watched with interest for the last three weeks the workmen who are
making a hole in the massive walls in a room next to mine. The walls
are about ten feet thick and are made of great boulders, the space
between being filled with mortar which time has made as hard as iron.

Every king or owner of Aalholm since the time it has stood on its legs
seems to have had different ideas about windows. One sees on its tired
old exterior traces of every kind and every period. Some round, some a
mere slit in the wall, some with arches all helter-skelter, without any
regard to symmetry or style.

Each owner made his window, and each successor bricked it up and put
his window in its place. The building is very long, with two towers. It
looks at a distance like a huge dachshund with head and tail sticking
up. There is a chapel in one wing, which no one ever enters, and there
is a theater in another wing, where in old times there were given
plays.

The park is beautiful beyond words. You come across some old graves of
vikings, of which nothing is left save the stones they used for the
making of them. The treasures that they contained have long since been
removed by a wise government in order to fill the national museums.
Many gold and silver coins have been picked up _in the grounds_, and
are turned to use by making tankards and bowls, and very pretty and
interesting they are. On the walls of the large hall there are
inscriptions which were made in the sixteenth century to commemorate
the visits of different monarchs. King Frederick II., 1585, must have
had many friends with him. Like our modern guest-book, each guest left
his name and motto, which was painted