tsteps which Sebalt had tracked in the woods were his.

When the baron had thus imparted his knowledge to me, I thought I ought
not to conceal from him the mysterious influence which the appearance of
the old woman in the neighbourhood of the castle exercised over the
count, nor the other circumstances of this unaccountable series of
events.

We were both amazed at the extraordinary coincidence between the facts
narrated, the mysterious attraction which these beings unconsciously
exercised the one over the other, the tragic drama which they performed
in union, the familiarity which the old woman had shown with the castle,
and its most secret passages, without any previous examination of them;
the costume which she had discovered in which to carry out this secret
act, and which could only have been rummaged out of some mysterious
retreat revealed to her by the strange instinct of insanity. Finally,
we were agreed that there are unknown, unfathomed depths in our being,
and that the mystery of death is not the only secret which God has veiled
from our eyes, although it may seem to us the most important.

But the darkness of night was beginning to yield to the pale tints of
early dawn. A bat was sounding the departure of the hours of darkness
with a singular note resembling the gurgling of liquid from a narrow
bottle-neck. A neighing of horses was heard far up the defile; then, with
the first rays of dawn, we distinguished a sledge driven by the baron's
servant; its bottom was littered with straw; on this the body was laid.

I mounted my horse, who seemed not sorry to use his limbs again, which
had been numbed by standing upon ice and snow the whole night through. I
rode after the sledge to the exit from the defile, when, after a grave
salutation--the usual token of courtesy between the nobility and the
people--they drove off in the direction of Hirschland and I rode towards
the towers of Nideck.

At nine I was in the presence of Mademoiselle Odile, to whom I gave a
faithful narrative of all that had taken place.

Then repairing to the count's apartments, I found him in a very
satisfactory state of improvement. He felt very weak, as was to be
expected after the terrible shocks of such crises as he had gone through,
but had returned to the full possession of his clear faculties, and
the fever had left him the evening before. There was, therefore, every
prospect of a speedy cure.

A few days later, seeing the old lord