f high above the portcullis. The moat was filled with
drift of crumbling years, and the walls, fallen in many places, ran
hither and thither in aimless curves and angles, much as they do to-day.

Up to this hour my chronicle has been only of such adventures as might
befall a soldier upon any enterprise, but now a strange thing happened.
Until that moment I had never seen the Chateau Cartillon, still there
was not a corner or a passage which did not seem well known to me. My
feet fell into paths they seemed no strangers to. I seemed to know
intuitively what each building was for, and even imagined most vividly
scenes which had transpired there. The whole place had the most
intense personal interest for me, why I knew not.

I am not superstitious, but the ruin oppressed me, made me restless and
uneasy; yet I was loath to leave. The loneliness of it all filled me
with vague apprehensions as I picked my way across the grass encumbered
court-yard toward the road again. A thousand haunting fancies of half
familiar things thronged from out each dismantled doorway. Faces I all
but recognized peered at me through the broken casements; voices I
almost knew called to me from many a silent corner. Yet all was still,
all was solitude. Heartily shamed at my quickening step I hurried on
and having consumed a quarter of my hour sat down by the spring
mentioned before, just beyond the castle's utmost boundary.

The haze of late afternoon had deepened into night upon the peaceful
meadows and lazy sweep of river. A distant peasant's song came faintly
from the fields.

While sitting there beside the spring, gazing listlessly into its
placid depths, an uncanny figure made its way through a breach in the
bastion, and stood before me. At first I confess I was startled, the
wild uncouth thing, bent and decrepit, with hair of long and tangled
gray, fiery sunken eyes, seemed born of another world than this. He
bent his gaze with searching scrutiny full upon me.

The lad whispered: "It's old mad Michel; he lives up there," pointing
to a tumbled down tower, "and believes himself the Count--the Count,
and him long dead lying yonder in the well."

The boy shuddered and crossed himself.

The old man gazed steadily at me for some moments then bowing low, he
cried:

"Hail! Son of d'Artin! Hast come to view thine own again? Let us
into the walls."

[Illustration: "The old man gazed steadily at me for some moments."]

"Let us g