ose great overhanging sweep offered a
convenient scaffold, Ortez paused to look at his victim. My breath
came slow, I could hardly hear their words.

"Think you his senses will return?"

"Possibly, sire," replied the man to whom this was addressed.

"Then we will wait; my sweet brother would weep to miss so brave a
spectacle as his own hanging."

He sat there upon the edge of the well, whence came the groans of the
dying, the hot, fresh odors of the dead, and waited, fiendish in the
patient ferocity of his more than mortal hate.

After a little I opened my eyes and stared about me, scarcely
comprehending where I was or what had happened. Ortez called upon his
men to raise me. Being placed erect the cord was drawn just taut
enough to sustain me standing. Now the ghastly woman I had seen in the
hall pushed her way through the crowd.

"Her son," she hissed, and savagely struck me in the mouth until blood
followed the blow. The cord instantly tightened and I felt myself
swing across the well. First only a dizziness and a parched mouth.
Then the tumultuous blood surged to my throat, beating, struggling,
gurgling like some pent-up mountain stream against the rocks. I threw
both hands up to grasp the rope--heard a laugh, not a human laugh, yet
it sounded so far, so very far away, away back upon the earth.

A gigantic merciful hand seemed to take my head within its gripe and
press out all the pain.

Fiery circles swam before my eyes; great crimson blotches floated about
in restless clouds of flame; then dreams, dreams, long delicious
dreams. And out of endless years of rhythmic music, the laughter of
low-voiced women, and many colored lights, came at length oblivion.

Thus the tale ended. It was the same I had heard in far away
Louisiana, told again with all the grim earnestness of desperate truth.

I stood now in the great courtyard again, beside the ancient well,
drinking eagerly every inspired syllable. When the speaker had done,
he shrank back into the darkness, and was gone.

It was as though I witnessed in my own person the wretched death of
Henri d'Artin, and stood within his castle's court when the ruthless
deed was done. Verily man knoweth not the rebellious vagaries of an
unhinged brain; knoweth not what be but unmeaning phantasies, or what
be solemn revelations from the very lips of God.

In the deep gloom the ruined castle loomed darkly, a ghastly monument
of evil deeds. I looked about fo